


Saved by a God

by BrideofCrixus



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), The Bane Chronicles - Sarah Rees Brennan & Cassandra Clare & Maureen Johnson
Genre: Anal, Drugs, F/M, Oral, Sex violence death and repeat, Smoking, major character deaths, sex in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:29:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26351953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrideofCrixus/pseuds/BrideofCrixus
Summary: Starts the moment after Talia slips her knife into Bruce’s side and speaks of the slow knife. The actions of Gordon, Blake, Selina Kyle and nearly everyone trying to save Gotham all come just a little too late. This picks up the moment that Talia departs Bane’s sight and he yanks Bruce to his feet. Things slow a bit, things become clearer past the razed Gotham City, I hope you enjoy, xoxo
Comments: 28
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

“We both know I have to kill you now; you’ll just have to imagine the fire.”

Bane tightened the garrote around Bruce’s neck, for now protected by the imported leather of his cowl. 

Bane readjusted his grip and took a moment to bask in the pleasure that came with taking a life, before giving the stainless-steel an assertive yank, the muscles of his massive forearms flexing. 

The stiff fabric of the double-stitched cowl finally gave way and the wire reached the vulnerable flesh of Batman’s neck. The stainless-steel wire penetrated Bruce’s skin with the probing intimacy of a lover and sliced through his pounding carotid artery and gave an encore bloodletting performance by severing his jugular vein until Bruce’s body exsanguinated to death in Bane’s strong arms.

Bane dropped Bruce’s flying rodent costumed corpse to the ground and could hear Talia stomping away, yelling orders at a few of the random anonymous armed men to join her as she prepared to descend the concrete steps.

Selina Kyle screeched to a halt on the bat pod, her skintight suit clinging to her body as she straddled the bike. She was just seconds too late in every way to make any kind of difference to Bruce’s life, her life or nearly every citizen in Gotham City.

Talia whistled and the armed men surrounding Talia opened fire on Selina and filled her to capacity with hollow point bullets. She didn’t suffer much before she crumbled to the ground, the primary cause of death would be listed as a perforated aorta and belly full of blood and bile.

Talia nodded in satisfaction and shielded her eyes from the sun as she stared upwards at the sound of the approaching helicopter. A wide smile filled her face as  
Barsad landed the commandeered helicopter from Wayne Enterprise’s Applied Sciences and pushed open the rear door.

As Talia crouched down and hurried towards the helicopter, across the city, Gordon blew out a relieved breath, the signal interceptor keeping the bomb from detonating. 

What Gordon didn’t know was that Talia had a back-up remote detonation switch set to detonate on a tight timeline. The red button she had presented to Bruce was for a show, to provide a dramatic flourish. Talia had decided she didn’t want to die with the city. 

“My father’s loyalty slipped,” Talia thought bitterly as she boarded the helicopter, the rotors impossibly loud over her head. 

She looked over as Bane stumbled down the concrete stairs and joined her in the helicopter along with the two men that were deputized under Gotham‘s Reckoning before killing Selina Kyle.

Barsad fiddled with the control panel and navigated the helicopter out of Gotham City. They had a little more time then the pilot in 1945 to escape the toxic radiation cloud, but still felt their metal tooth fillings buzz in their jaws when they looked back at Gotham City where a now swollen and noxious mushroom cloud vaporized those in the immediate vicinity and would cause destruction for generations.

Bane glanced over at Talia, expecting to see jubilation on her features. 

Instead she looked angry, her brows knit together, and she clenched and unclenched her hands into tight fists. 

Bane looked back as Gotham burned thinking of the hopeless drones perished, Foley was dead before the real show, died dressed nicely though. 

Blake and most of the bridge inhabitants all succumbed to drowning when the bridge collapsed, and they were plunged into the frigid waters. Blake died a failure, surrounded by other drowned orphans.

Gordon was vaporized, little bits of his broken DNA strands were far flung and persisted for years in concrete cracks and storm sewer grates. 

Bane could tell she was angry and couldn’t understand since Gotham was actively being decimated. 

“What’s wrong?” he wheezed. His mask still malfunctioning, his chest growing tight. 

Talia shook herself free and patted his hand. “Rest now,” she murmured.

“Tell me what troubles you,” he tried to say assertively. “I can rest later.”

Bane couldn’t stop his biological process of putting Talia and her needs ahead of his, almost eager to live life knowing that one day he would sacrifice himself for her.

Talia rubbed her eyes; the helicopter blades had swirled up a lot of grit that was making her look like she was crying voluntarily. 

She sniffed hard before she yanked at the laces of her heavy boots until she could kick them off. “There’s not many places we can hide,” she said on a tired groan as  
she slid her socked feet onto Bane’s lap. 

Bane reflexively dropped his hands to massage the aching arches of her feet as she closed her eyes before continuing. 

“Everything I have done has been in loyalty to The League,” she mumbled. “Everything I have done has been with honor and resolute diligence,” she hissed. 

The random men she plucked before death swept through Gotham nodded, Bane glared at them, they didn’t know the woman they were looking at. He kept his frown away from Talia as she spoke though, he didn’t like to hear her brag about her supposed honor. 

Bane had been careful to keep his growing disgust at her off his face when she crawled into her Miranda Tate skin suit. Lately, when she returned to being an alleged  
woman of honor, more of Miranda stayed with her. Sometimes it was the expensive fragrance that clung to her hair, the mineral makeup swept across her cheek bones, her lips darkened by a stain sold at high-end boutiques. 

His heart did burst with pride that she eviscerated the city but wanted her to explain her rising fury. 

“Like I said, there’s not many places we can safely go,” Talia said before Barsad interrupted her.

“I’m going to need you to tell me any safe place, I don’t want to burn through fuel unnecessarily.” 

Talia rubbed her nose with her sleeve before she spit out a set of coordinates to Barsad over the headset.

“Where are you leading us?” Bane asked.

“Do you distrust my choices.”

“Never,” Bane said quickly, “I was merely asking out of curiosity and in the hopes you’ll finish speaking of this safe place.”

Talia nodded in satisfaction and she continued speaking as Barsad moved the adapted Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne helicopter in the direction that Talia’s coordinates directed. 

“I thought for a long time my father had never done wrong,” she said wistfully and paused as Bane’s strong thumbs kneaded the bottom of her feet. “I discovered his secret,” she whispered and stared down at her hands, the fingernails still the glossy red of Persephone’s pomegranate’s.

“He acted without honor and fucked one of those sloths, those sheep he held such disdain for, their sloppy union produced a child,” Talia spit out in a rush. 

Bane was careful to not change his touch in any way and continued to massage her toes as she continued. 

Talia described her father decades before, infiltrating a party in order to kill a world leader. Ras al Ghul had tracked the world leader to the discovered time gap in the security detail and was about to end his life when he saw Sienna Aurora Troy through a sliding glass door and felt his heart fall to his feet.

Ras al Ghul finished the job and washed his hands before tracking down the visionary woman he had spied from afar.

Ras found her at the bar ordering a dry martini. He watched from afar as she chatted amiably with a few guests before asking the bartender for a book of matches and disappeared in a darkened alcove.

Ras followed her and heard the match before the scent of sulfur filled the air. He found her leaning against a balcony that was stuffed with lush ferns, the tendrils and fronds teasing the golden skin of her calves. His eyes found her bare feet from where she had kicked off her bone-breaking stilettos. 

“I don’t believe I know you and I know all of Karl’s friends.” Sienna said, her voice hypnotizing Ras from the first syllable.

Ras looked up as Sienna moved her cigarette to her left hand as she extended her right towards him. His eyes couldn’t miss the entire boulder on her left ring finger. 

“Sienna Troy.”

“Who do you belong to?” he thought as he shook her hand, soft and smooth within his own solid and rough grip. 

“Pleasure to meet you, Robert Armin.”

Ras was sure that Sienna let her hand linger before she returned to the balcony and relit her cigarette that had gone out. He declined when she offered him a perfumed French cigarette.

“What brings you to the party Mr. Armin?”

“Robert please,” Ras said and moved a few steps closer to where she was leaning against the balcony railing. “I have an interest in the Cayman acquisitions.”

Sienna nodded, “I’ve had my absolute fill hearing about that.”

“Have you?” Ras asked.

Sienna nodded, “Karl, my husband, is the one who organized the Cayman operation.”

Ras nodded as Sienna stared off into the dim night. 

She turned to him suddenly, “I saw you earlier.”

“I saw you too by the bar.”

“No, I saw you before that.”

“When?”

“When you arrived at 8:47.”

“That’s very specific.”

“I looked at the clock because I wanted to remember the exact moment.”

“Why that moment?”

“Because I’ve never wanted to fuck someone as you and I wanted to remember the time.”

Ras let his expression remain neutral as he closed most of the distance remaining between them.

“What if I said I thought the exact same thing.”

“We could get killed, my husband is very jealous,” she whispered and tried to move away from Ras.

“I don’t care,” he rasped and captured her in his massive embrace. Sienna covered her mouth to stifle her gasp as Ras’s hand moved up the inside of her thigh, eager  
to find her intimate center. 

“We don’t have much time,” she said on a ragged moan as she helped him get past her clothing and slide his fingers into her wet feminine center. 

Ras could’ve willing drowned in her soft sighs as he teased his fingers in small circles around her sensitive clit.

Sienna’s hands scrabbled at the front of his charcoal grey pants and fumbled at the zipper. 

“We don’t have much time,” she whispered against his ear, impatient as she reached inside his pants to free his painfully hard cock.

“I will probably never see you again,” he admitted on a ragged groan and met Sienna’s wide eyes.

“I know,” she finally murmured and shifted until she could tease the head of his cock at her wet opening. “You’re the first man that has looked at me in years,” she murmured and slid down the length of his rigidity. “Fuck me before you leave here,” she grunted as their intimate flesh kissed. 

Anything holding Ras back fell away as he moved his hands to her hips and yanked her down harder to meet his rigid masculinity. 

Ras sat up suddenly and pulled her close, he cut off any audible sound she might’ve made when he swallowed her breath with his lips. He bent his legs at the knees and was able to change the positioning to rapidly plunge his cock into her until her thighs shook with a soaking wet orgasmic onslaught.

Sienna slid her fingers through his hair as she rode him until her thighs nearly gave out from exertion as he arched his hip upwards and spilled his hot, sticky seed deep inside her. 

Ras never got to say anything else as shouts sounded from the upstairs bedroom where the world leader’s body was discovered.

“Be well whoever you really are,” Sienna whispered and chastely kissed Ras before skipping barefoot to the pool house bathroom and cleaning up before rejoining the party.

Sienna didn’t know that her and Ras’s furtive moment of passion would produce a child. 

Ras left the party but kept track of Sienna through well-paid eyes and ears. He heard of her pregnancy and he also heard that her husband Karl was sterile. 

Ras was out of the country when Sienna and Karl Troy were divorced.

Ras had been relieved to hear that Sienna had moved to a sleepy seaside town and was nearing the delivery date of the healthy baby according to the radiologist  
technician who sold him a copy of the sonogram and report. 

Sienna’s last day alive had been uneventful but she couldn’t shake the cravings for peaches. She was leaving the grocery store with three pounds of peaches when she was hit by the drunk driver who crossed the median line and crushed her small hybrid.

“My father’s slut whore mistress was killed instantly but the baby was okay,” Talia growled. “My father mourned her.”

“What happened to the child?” Bane asked and felt Talia’s feet grow still in his hands. 

Talia looked up at him and gave him a peculiar, crooked smile before she looked down at her watch.

“You’ll be meeting her in just a couple hours, I didn’t call ahead to tell her we were coming either,” she added with a cackle.


	2. A Collision of Two worlds

Bane’s mask kept his shocked expression hidden.

“Who raised the child after the accident?”

Talia leaned her head back and stared up at the padded ceiling. 

“My father found a family who wanted to adopt, and I don’t know why them, but he picked this mathematics professor and chemist couple in upstate New York.”

Bane didn’t have to wait for her to continue, he could feel her muscles begin to vibrate with angry energy.

“The chemist wife died about five years ago of an aneurysm and the professor had a heart attack, recovered and retired at some property in Maryland.”

“How do you know that?” Bane asked and resumed moving his thumbs in slow circles on her heels. 

Talia rubbed at her eyes, real tears fell from her eyes and she sniffed hard. “I found this box in the corner of the closet, under the carpet. I only discovered it because one of the dogs was digging there.”

Bane smiled behind his mask as he thought of the many mixed breeds that provided constant companionship. 

“My father paid the professor monthly from day one to raise her,” Talia spit before she added. “He paid for everything and all her education. He even paid for her braces and fucking allowance,” Talia shouted in the confined space.

Talia’s expression went blank. “The worst thing beyond the money was the fact that he wanted yearly pictures and frequent updates. He even got to name her.”

Bane felt her feet grow still in his hands.

“What’s her name.”

“Helena.”

“Helena Elizabeth.”

Hours passed as Talia, her two new sidekicks and Bane all napped as Barsad directed the powerful turboshaft of the helicopter engine towards the property on the outskirts of town, conveniently isolated to Talia’s delight. They all piled into a car they found that was unlocked in the parking lot of a big box retail store. Barsad hotwired the engine of a decent sedan and they drove the remaining distance to the home of retired mathematics Professor Howard Lang and his adopted daughter Helena. 

A little after 7pm, the Lang household, which sat at the end of a long gravel driveway was quiet except for the sporadic conversation between Howard and Helena. The two lived in a sprawling two story home that was built in the late 1970’s and boasted a kidney shaped pool, gazebo covered jacuzzi and tennis court. There was just enough property surrounded by lush greenery and towering trees which gave them a feeling of privacy and isolation. 

Howard had just gotten settled at the dinner table, he suffered from a degenerative bone disease and was now reduced to walking with a much slower and uneven gait. Most of his footfalls caused spikes of pain to drive deep into his joints. He also hated asking for any assistance walking so Helena went to set the table and bring out dinner as he arranged a small round cushion under each hip. She set a crystal bowl of spring greens that was arranged with chunks of avocado as the doorbell rang in two quick successions. She paused in her path back to the kitchen and turned towards her father, “are you expecting someone?”

He shrugged, “probably someone wanting money, you know they always show up at dinner. Just ignore it, they’ll eventually leave on their own,” he said right before the doorbell rang again. This time the chime sounded rapidly four times in a row. 

Sighing, Helena made her way to the front door, she opened it before bothering to first look out the peephole. Her frustration was obvious on her face when she opened the door. 

“Hello Helena, it’s nice to finally meet you in person,” Talia said in a voice that grated on Bane’s nerves. She sounded so much like her smooth second persona   
Miranda Tate. Her words were chunks of salt rubbed into raw, open flesh.

Bane felt certain the moment his eyes fell on Helena Elizabeth Lang that his heart clinically stopped beating long enough to be declared dead. 

His vision seemed to divide and come back together as he drank in every part of her, memorizing the messy pile of hair on top of her head, held together with a plastic claw clip down to her turquoise blue toenails peeking from her flat sandals. 

“She’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he thought to himself as Helena stared down with a puzzled look at Talia’s extended hand.

“I’m sorry, do we know each other from the University?” Helena asked with a pleasant smile. 

Talia’s façade fell. “It’s Talia. Talia al Ghul.”

“Ale ghoul?” Helena asked nervously. 

“Your whore mother fucked my father, I’m his legacy, his real daughter. You’re a hybrid, barely a lifeform, you were produced from a cheap fuck.”

“Excuse me?” Helena sputtered as she flushed and started let the door close a bit as she continued. “My mother Sylvia Lang is dead, and the estate is settled, there’s nothing to extort. Please leave,” she said and started to slam the door, anxious to lock it.

“Stop and restrain her,” Talia said over her shoulder to Bane.

He moved with the speed of a tidal wave and simultaneously pushed open the door and scooped up Helena. 

Helena shrieked as Bane moved his free hand to capture her wrists and draw her hands tight at her lower back. She was forced to face Talia as she stepped over the threshold. 

She told the two random men that she had learned on the flight were named Chris and Ryan, to go secure anyone else in the house but no killing or permanently maiming. 

Barsad was already moving around the perimeter to access the cable and phone lines. 

“Your mother was Sienna Troy and she was married to the hedge fund billionaire Karl Troy. Your mother seduced and fucked my father at some party. Karl found out and sent her slut ass to the other coastline and she died in a car crash before you were born, I’m sure she was drunk.”

“You’re insane,” Helena screeched and struggled futilely until Bane tightened his grip and slipped her forearms further upwards until she hissed in pain. 

“What the hell is going on here?”

Bane, Talia, and Helena all looked over as Ryan appeared as he yanked Howard across the polished hardwood floor. 

Blood fell freely from his right nostril and his breathing was labored to even the untrained eye. 

“Dad!” Helena screamed and lunged towards her father as Ryan dumped him into an antique rocking chair. 

“Everyone shut up,” Talia said and discharged her pistol into the hand laid floor. 

Everyone stopped talking and gave Talia their full attention. 

“Okay, look, drop the surprised act. How do you think you got through school not to mention life without knowing who my father is? You spent his money.”

Helena shook her head, “I don’t know what you’re talking apart. My mother was head of the chemistry department, I had a good foot in the door,” she said as she shook her head.

Talia walked over to where Howard was slumped in the rocking chair. 

“Did you not tell her who her real father is?” she asked as she put the pistol under his chin and raised his face to meet hers. 

Howard was overwhelmed and sagged as his shoulders shook with sobs.

Talia blew out a sharp breath. “Alright, well we’ve got a whole of talking to do. I’m hungry though, where can I clean up before a big helping of whatever I smell cooking.”

Bane squeezed Helena’s wrists as she lunged again towards Howard as Ryan yanked him roughly to his feet. 

“Where?” Talia asked as she pointed the gun at Howard’s departing back.

Bane could smell the light musk that Helena dabbed behind her ears as her heart began to race. “The bathroom is to the right and the kitchen is through there,” Helena said with a nod to the left. 

“Go set the table,” Talia said and pivoted sharply towards the downstairs half bathroom and cleaned up as best as she could in the sink.

As Talia scrubbed her hands and face, Bane pushed Helena towards the kitchen.

“Are you okay dad?” she asked and tried to move towards her father when Ryan settled him at the dining room table. 

Bane wordlessly pushed her through a small doorway and into the chef ready kitchen. The oven timer still had twenty minutes on the chicken.

He released her wrists and pushed her towards the granite countertop and the pile of half-chopped potatoes.

Helena flinched when she heard Talia slap the dining room table as she shouted.

“What do you have in the way of booze?” 

Helena closed her eyes as Talia’s shrill syllables carried into the kitchen.

“I’ll bring you something,” Helena shouted back. She felt Bane’s eyes as she turned away from him and opened a low cabinet next to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine and a squat bottle of aged whiskey. 

Bane let his eyes travel the length of her body, the hem of her summer dress teased the skin of her smooth thighs and his fingertips felt electric with the desire to know what her flesh felt like. 

He leaned back against the opposite counter and watched her move around the kitchen and finish the rest of dinner and gathered more plates and utensils.

Helena felt her chest tighten and her heart threatened to leap out of her ribcage as he followed her like a shadow as she took dish after dish to the rectangular table where Talia, Howard, Chris, and Ryan waited. 

Talia smiled smugly as Helena served everyone a full plate of herb-roasted chicken, creamy mashed potatoes and pan roasted Brussel sprouts with toasted pine nuts and shallots. 

Helena felt the weight of Bane’s eyes as she passed everyone their plate. She paused before she handed him a full plate, their eyes locking as he reached up and depressed a few coiled wires at the base of his neck. He switched his serum from an inhalant to intravenously through a modified arterial line that led directly to his   
heart. 

He watched a stray hair spring free of her sloppy bun and tickle the top of her earlobe. His eyes landed on her mouth as he unbuckled his titanium mask and pulled it free of his face. 

Helena kept her surprise inside at the strong line of his jaw and the scant amount of scars that his mask covered.

He licked his dry lips as he accepted the plate from her. “Thank you,” he murmured, eager to load his fork with food she had made, anything to keep the desire to forcefully taste her at bay. 

Helena was grateful for the brief silence while everyone filled their bellies. 

“Well we have a lot to talk about,” Talia said and filled her wine glass to the rim with a vintage merlot. 

Helena poured some of the strong amber whiskey into a short glass as Talia told Chris and Ryan to go join Barsad. 

“Tell her everything now,” Talia demanded to Howard’s downcast face. 

Bane’s eyes never left Helena’s face as Howard told Helena everything. He left no detail out about getting to adopt her. He explained that he knew Ras al Ghul as 

Sebastian Listonstiger, a fellow professor from overseas in the field of mathematics. The two men had inexplicably bonded and had a genuine friendship for years before Ras ever met Sienna. 

Howard looked up at Helena, tears freely streaming down his face as he spoke. “I’m sorry, you’re my daughter.” 

Helena looked down at her plate and crumbled up napkin as every emotion hit her at once. 

She jumped to her feet and covered her mouth as she coughed and scrambled towards the bathroom. 

Bane followed her closely as she dropped to her knees and vomited up undigested chunks of chicken on a buttery rich river of bile and parsley bits. 

He waited until her choking subsided and she pulled the towel off the wall and wiped at her mouth.

The room suddenly felt too small and his clothes too confining as he stared down at her and how much her dress had shifted from her violent spasms.

The fabric had ridden up nearly the entire length of her thigh and one of her thin shoulder straps slipped. 

He clenched his hands into fist and bit the inside of his cheek as she struggled to her feet and rinsed out her mouth before she patted her face dry. 

Helena met his eyes in the mirror, he filled the entire doorway. 

“How much is she paying you? I can probably double it?”

Bane held her gaze and stepped aside. “It’s not about money,” he finally murmured as she had to walk past him in an impossibly close manner. 

He heard her hold her breath when she moved past him and returned to the table where Talia and Howard were deep in a low conversation that they stopped as soon   
as Helena reappeared.

“What were you talking about?” Helena asked.

Talia turned towards her, “how much you owe me for your life.”

“Owe you?”

“Yes, the only reason you didn’t end up in the foster system is my father. He acted without honor once in his life and fucked a rich whore and made you. My father paid for your upbringing, care, education and the very fact that you’re standing there right now.”

Helena took a few shaky steps backwards and was stopped by the broad wall of Bane’s body. She flinched when his hands fell on her shoulders and just stayed still but unable to ignore.

Talia drained her glass before she stood from the table, “you owe me for every second you’ve been alive with fucking interest.”

“How much do you want?” Helena asked flatly.


	3. Wants and Needs

Almost everyone in the understated dining room flinched as Talia gave a long, harsh cackle.

“It’s not as simple as writing a fucking check,” she spit and refilled her cut-crystal glass, splashing the full-bodied red wine onto the tablecloth. The beige fibers sucked up the alcoholic red drops and the stain spread into the size of a misshapen half-dollar.

Helena remained rooted in place, light-headed from the violent vomiting episode and good old- fashioned fear. She could feel the unmasked man behind her, his broad shoulders and frame nearly cast a shadow indoors. 

Talia slurped from the glass and licked her full lips before she turned her attention to Chris and Ryan.

“Get Professor Lang out of here, I want to talk to my sister alone.”

Helena snapped out of her standing comatose state as Ryan closed his hand around Howard’s upper arm.

“Don’t you hurt him,” Helena screeched and got no more than one step from where she was standing when Bane’s hand closed around her wrist and kept her from doing anything foolish. 

Talia smiled smugly when she heard Helena’s startled cry of fear.

“Calm down, try and preserve some self-respect, you two are still needed, you’ll know exactly when you become expendable,” Talia hissed and made an impatient dismissive gesture towards Ryan and Chris from where they flanked Howard. 

Helena watched helplessly, Bane’s hold unbreakable around her wrist as she watched Chris and Ryan led Howard from the room.

Talia watched Helena try and keep her composure. “Sit down,” she finally said before settling in the empty chair at the head of the table.

Bane had to practically lift Helena off her feet to get her to move and into the chair at the opposite end of the table. He moved back to stand in the doorway, his eyes never left Helena.

Talia shifted uncomfortably in the high-backed rigid chair before leaning forward on her elbows, tracing the tip of her index finger around the rim of her etched crystal glass. 

Talia made the glass hum as percussionists for her as she spoke. “I’m going to require more than money if you wish for you and your father to remain living.”

Helena felt her chest tighten, “what else do you want?”

“Your life,” Talia said easily and drained her glass.

In the space before Helena spoke, Bane watched Talia dribble red wine on her blouse and felt a wave of repugnance towards her and how far from honor she had fallen. He felt a near-paralyzing gut-punch of revulsion at how her austere image had toppled into the ocean and had settled into the very depths of the Mariana Trench. 

“My life?” Helena parroted.

Talia nodded, “I don’t have a lot of places left that I can hide anymore. You’re going to leave and I’m going to slide into your life and disappear in plain sight.”  
Helena shook her head and couldn’t help but scoff.

“You can’t just pretend to be me, what about the faculty, my friends?”

“You’re going to move away and leave your name, social security number and identity behind.”

“You can’t be serious,” Helena said and blinked rapidly as she tried to comprehend the entirety of the events since Talia had knocked on the door.

Talia smiled, “it’d be more convenient, not to mention, just, for me to simply kill you. I’m being benevolent and I strongly advise you begin showing gratitude.”

“Gratitude?” Helena said and leapt to her feet. “I’m not going to give you anything, not a single cent or bit of shelter.”

“You’re going to beg for your pitiful existence whore,” Talia shouted shrilly and threw her nearly empty wine glass at Helena.

Bane watched in slow-motion, unable to stop the glass as it cartwheeled and shattered on the table. 

Helena put her hands up as the sharp shards rained over her, minute slices appearing in her palms and droplets of the red wine splashed onto the fabric of her dress.

Talia watched as tears began to roll down Helena’s cheeks. “Oh, what’s the matter princess?” she mocked and fetched another empty glass from the table.

Talia cackled in between long swallows of a now room-temperature white wine, beads of condensation stuck to the outside of the green bottle as she directed her words at Bane from where he remained standing rigidly still in the doorway. 

“Stay with my darling sister and see that she only cleans up this mess and then goes upstairs. Don’t let her near a computer or phone” she ordered as she rose unsteadily to her feet. “I’m going to go have a long chat with the professor before turning in. We have a lot to discuss in the morning.”

Helena slumped into the chair with defeat as Talia left the room, walking sideways as she headed towards the rear of the house. 

Helena didn’t look up when Bane moved from the doorway and closer to the table. 

He wasn’t sure how to address her and first looked down the hall to make sure Talia was out of earshot before he spoke. 

“Are you injured?”

Helena looked down at the smattering of tiny cuts on her palms and shook her head, not trusting her voice to speak. 

A full eight minutes passed with both of them remaining in complete silence.

While Bane walked around the room and lingered in front of the fireplace and its altar of family photos, he memorized the pictures of Helena that spanned the last few decades. There was of course a variety of baby and elementary school photos. 

The picture that caught his eye as the most intriguing was a photo of her holding up a paper at some sort of party. He squinted at the photo and saw that the paper she held was for a degree, he couldn’t see what she had majored in. 

He kept his eyes on the photograph of her captured in a glossy eternity and glanced over to where she was sitting now, the photo didn’t look like it had been taken that long ago. In the photo on the mantle she was half-smiling at the camera and her eyes sparkled with an intriguing mixture of mayhem and innocence.  
Helena looked up suddenly and caught his eyes on her. 

She quickly looked away and rose to her feet and began to fumble the plates into a messy stack.

“You don’t have to do that right now.”

“No, I’d like to,” she mumbled and gathered up the utensils. “I’d like to clean this up now and then change, if that’s allowed,” she added.

Bane remained silent while she continued to clean up. As she rinsed the plates and filled the dishwasher, down the hall, Talia leaned closer to Howard, her red wine breath a wave of sweet rot with her every spoken word. 

“I know you made some sizable investments in pharmaceuticals after your time in the Navy and I know that you also made substantial profits from those investments. 

I know that you have a safety deposit box with a lot of your dead wife’s jewelry in it too,” she hissed. 

Howard’s shoulders slumped and he flinched when Ryan sat down in a plush leather swivel chair across from him. 

“Necessity drove me here professor,” she slurred and sat on his lap, wrapping her arms around his arthritic neck before she continued in a sing-song tone.

“I didn’t come here to argue professor. The bottom line is I want the cash, jewelry, and house before you and your whore daughter leave the state, preferably the   
country.”

“Your father and I were good friends, why are you so filled with hate?” Howard asked and felt an ache in his chest as his heart valves started to strongly dislike the additional stress to his body. 

“My father acted like every other animal and fucked that rich bitch,” she shouted as she stood up too fast for the amount of alcohol she had consumed and struggled to keep her balance. 

“Your father was a human like everyone else, he acted out of passion, there’s no fault on anyone’s part,” Howard started before Talia slapped him across the face. Her palm stung with the force of hitting the side of his unshaven face.

“My father was a god,” she screamed. “He didn’t roll around with the animals,” she shouted as her breath came harder. “And you raised the progeny of his dishonorable rutting.”

“Get him out of my face until the morning,” Talia screeched at Ryan and Chris. “There has to be at least a dozen bedrooms here, find out where he squirrels away at night and keep him there until dawn.”

Talia stomped back to the dining room as Helena was wiping down the counters and starting the dishwasher to the extra hot and rinse cycle. 

She paused in the entryway as a wave of dizziness washed over her. Talia’s eyes first found Bane as he leaned against the kitchen counter and watched Helena flit about the kitchen.

Talia’s drunk mind kept her from sensing the intensity in Bane’s gaze he directed at Helena. Talia’s inebriated brain kept her from smelling and seeing the beginning of lust that had took hold and sprouted within him the very moment he’d laid eyes on Helena. 

As Bane watched Helena, he wasn’t even aware of how delicate tendrils of brash desire, desperate want and need began to spread throughout his system and spread like metastasizing cancer. 

Bane stood up straight as Talia appeared in the kitchen, Helena dropped the dishcloth she had been using and froze. Both of them waited in different ways for the words that would come tumbling from Talia’s drunken lips. 

Talia was practically seeing two of Helena and had a sinking feeling she was going to vomit just like her sister did earlier and wanted to make it to one of the toilets in the Ivory Tower before she puked up a belly full of parsley swimming in acidic red wine. 

“Tomorrow morning we’re going to talk more specifics and then we’ll head down to the bank. I need you to be out of my face until the morning.”

Helena settled a hand on the counter and tried to steady her breathing as Talia looked past her and directed her words toward Bane and gave similar marching orders to the ones she gave Chris and Ryan.

“Take her to her room and make sure she stays put until the morning.”

Talia dragged her gaze back to Helena and studied her for a long time, so long that Helena finally steeled her nerves before she spoke. “What?!?”

Talia smiled lazily. “I was just thinking I knew what to expect when I finally met you in person. I read all about you, your published papers, your social media posts, the bullshit you like, but nothing prepared me for this,” she admitted as she chuckled and flicked her drunken gaze back to Bane. 

“Bring her downstairs before dawn.”

Bane nodded as Talia directed her attention back to Helena.

“My father didn’t pass on any culinary skills; you must’ve gotten that from your whore mother. You can have breakfast ready and demonstrate something of your worth.”

Helena opened her mouth to offer a rebuttal when Bane was suddenly next to her, his strong hand closing around her upper arm, squeezing the supple flesh with just enough pressure to gain her full attention and ensure her silence. 

“I will have her right here before dawn,” Bane murmured to Talia and was relieved to see her accept his words and practically pirouette away as her alcohol intoxication only continued to climb. 

Bane and Helena stayed still until they heard Talia’s footsteps retreat and a door slam in the distance before either of them dared to breathe. 

“Where’s your bedroom?” he asked as he kept his grasp firm on her upper arm. 

Helena cleared her throat, “upstairs,” she managed.

“Lead the way,” he murmured when she remained still.

She let out her breath when he released her arm. She struggled to not rub her fingers over the skin he had been squeezing. 

Helena flicked off the various lights and checked the door and window locks as she made her way to the spiral staircase.

She couldn’t help but shout when the front door opened as she checked the lock. 

Barsad made a surprised sound when he opened the door to Helena and Bane close behind her. 

“Pardon me ma’am, miss, excuse me,” he stammered and gained a genuine smile from Helena and a flash of genuine hatred from Bane.

“Please call me Helena, you must be with the rest of the band,” she smirked. 

Barsad smoothed down his shirt. “I did not sign on for all of this,” he said softly.

“But you’re doing her bidding nonetheless,” Helena said gently and turned away from both men and began to ascend the wood stairs with carpet running down the center. 

Barsad and Bane regarded each other wordlessly before Bane continued to follow Helena.

Helena felt the weight of his gaze as he wordlessly followed her down a long hallway and past several rooms before pausing at a closed door. 

“This is my room,” she finally said and half-turned towards him, avoiding his eyes. 

“Is there a room nearby with a sofa or bed?”

She nodded and pointed at an ajar door a few rooms back, “there’s a futon in there, it’s kind of the office.”

Bane glanced over his shoulder at the room and then back at her. She dared to meet his eyes as he rose to his full height and stared down at her. 

She fought a flinch as he reached past her and pushed open her bedroom door. 

Helena kept her hands outstretched in front of her, the façade of space between them let her be able to breathe. She barely suppressed a shudder as she felt like she was cowering at the base of Vesuvius and he took a small step away from her. 

“Sleep well Helena Elizabeth, tomorrow brings a busy day and much to talk about.”

She let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding as he cast her one last glance and closed her bedroom door after she stepped inside.


	4. Listen and Observe

Downstairs, Howard laid awake and stared at the ceiling for hours. His sleepless mind made him revisit the memories of Ras al Ghul, who he knew as Sebastian Listonstiger, when he came to him with news of the near-simultaneous death of Sienna and birth of the at that point unnamed infant girl.

Howard and his wife Sylvia had been trying for years to conceive and were considering adoption. Ras knew he couldn’t keep the baby and that Howard and Sylvia had been destined to be her parents. Ras shed genuine tears for Sienna and the regret of not being able to raise the infant girl. He wanted the baby to know nothing of her conception and introduction to the world.

Sylvia was over the moon and had given her whole heart to the baby girl the moment she held her in her soft arms. 

Howard had tried to decline Ras’s overly generous offers for monthly payments and assistance wherever else he could be of help, all behind the scenes.

Ras would not be deterred, and Howard ended up just saying thank you and using the monthly money to ensure the baby girl grew into the woman she currently was. 

Sleep eventually found Howard as he remembered Ras only asking if he could name the baby. 

Howard nodded at the name Helena. He remembered asking why.

“Why that name Sebastian?” Howard whispered to the dark as he closed his eyes.

“Because of her mother, she invaded my very heart and soul, part of me died with her and I know she is waiting for me.”

As sleep consumed Howard, down the hall, Chris and Ryan crashed in front of a wide tv with game day replays in matching recliners. Both men dozed, each thankful to not have been left behind in Gotham to die like so many of Talia’s loyal followers.

As the two men cheered for highlights of their teams of choice, in the spacious family room, Talia reclined on the sectional sofa. She pulled an afghan from the back of the couch over herself and frowned into the dark.

Her anger was still charged despite how much she had tried to water board it with alcohol. 

Talia ran her palm over the smooth surface of the imported Italian linen and scoffed.

“Why does she get to live in such luxury? She hasn’t earned anything, broken herself in service to another, never bent the knee in fealty,” she thought and rolled onto her back and stared into the dark until the alcohol finally put her nervous system down and she succumbed to sleep. 

While everyone else downstairs slept, Barsad was in the kitchen picking through the leftovers that Helena had put into various glass storage containers. As he dipped a corner of bread into some gravy, upstairs Bane settled onto a tacky purple sofa in the office/library/storage room and tilted his head to the left and right, stretching the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders. He stared at the wall, wishing he could see through to what Helena was doing behind her closed bedroom door. 

He looked around the semi-cluttered room, the Ivory Tower’s Room of Shame. His eyes fell on a half-empty bottle of Irish Cream on the desk and frowned. Seeing the alcohol made him think of the tabloid headlines of the billionaire Bruce Wayne out on the town with Miranda Tate. One image Bane couldn’t shake was of Miranda and Bruce at a home game on the fifty-yard line. 

He still felt a wave of disappointment rush through him as Bruce and Miranda were captured on the kiss cam and she let that pitiful excuse for a man shove his privileged tongue down her throat and practically grope her on national tv. 

Bane despised the heady scent of Wayne’s cologne that clung to Talia’s skin after she returned from an evening out as Miranda Tate.

He eventually fell into a light doze as down the hall, Helena struggled to log double digit minutes of sleep. 

Helena sat up and switched on her tv. She kept the volume low and tried to calm herself with some deep breathing and then a few yoga moves. She stood and fought a frustrated sob before deciding that sleep was not going to happen, and she was instead going to soak in the tub. 

Back down the hall, Bane stirred when he heard the sound of the bathwater being cranked on full blast. He drifted back to a light sleep as Helena soaked under a layer of lightly scented opalescent bubbles.

Hours passed as the moon finished its pass through the night sky and gave birth to the dawn. Bane stirred awake as the early morning sunlight filtered in through the window. 

He stretched deeply, his joints cracking in protest at his uncomfortable sleeping on the sofa. He stood outside Helena’s bedroom door and listened for any sounds before knocking. 

He strained his ears and heard the morning weather report anchor wishing everyone a happy Monday morning before he lightly knocked. 

He raised his hand to knock again when Helena’s face appeared in the small space she allowed the door to open. 

Bane felt his well memorized script fall away and he ended up just staring at her, his expression unreadable.

“I’m guessing this is the breakfast call?” she asked. 

Bane saw the redness and residual puffiness from her on and off crying and couldn’t think of any words to offer. Instead he nodded stiffly and stepped back so she could walk past him, down the stairs and to the kitchen that was growing brighter and brighter with the rising run. 

His eyes tried to move everywhere at once over her. She had soaked for hours and he was practically drowned in the light rosewater scent that trailed behind her. She had slipped on a heather grey cashmere sweater that smoothed over her body; the subtle vee neck enhanced her lithe curves. Her worn jeans drew his attention and he was lucky to not stumble as his eyes gravitated to the curve of her bottom under the dark blue denim. 

Bane settled at the kitchen island and watched Helena misdirect her stress into roughly chopping chives, aggressively whipping egg whites, and coarsely grinding black peppercorns and Himalayan pink sea salt over cheese hemorrhaging omelets. 

He watched her scoop dark grounds of coffee into a brown organic filter and fill her cup as soon as there was enough to gulp in the carafe.

Bane kept thinking of things to say, to ask and stopped short of speaking each time, unsure of how she would perceive his questions. He didn’t want to elicit defensiveness or invoke further fear within her. 

He wished he knew what she was feeling at that very moment. 

Talia appeared almost out of thin air as Helena was spooning a couple tablespoons of sugar over some unevenly chopped strawberries. 

Talia looked like she had been through hell. She hadn’t bothered to even brush her hair and instead made a beeline to the granite island and took Helena’s half-empty coffee cup.

Helena arched an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as Talia took fast sips off the ceramic mug.

“What’s for breakfast?” she finally croaked.

“Omelets and some potatoes,” Helena said and filled a new cup for herself.

Talia cleared her throat and gestured towards Bane. 

“I need to speak to you privately.”

Bane nodded and rose without hesitation, he followed Talia down a long hallway to a narrow laundry room. Talia closed the door and rubbed her eyes before she spoke.

“I spent some time in Howard’s office looking for the safety deposit key and banking credentials. It’s either hidden somewhere else or there is a safe that it’s in. I need them alive for now to withdraw money, liquidate the stock accounts but Howard wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“For now, just listen and observe. I’m going to discuss the financials again at the table and I want you to gauge her for the veracity of her truth telling.”  
Bane nodded. He kept his pleasure at being ordered to keep his eyes on Helena to himself as he followed Talia from the laundry room and back to the kitchen where he began to salivate with the delicious aromas in the air and the tantalizing view of the line of Helena’s neck that was exposed from her low messy bun. 

Bane took his seat as Helena bustled around and passed everyone a full plate. He watched her return to the cupboard to the right of the built-in microwave and put some pills from a multi-colored medication tray into a small cup. 

Helena set the medication next to Howard’s plate and laid her hand on his shoulder before taking a seat and sipping her cooling coffee.

For a while, the only sounds were eating and drinking. After the plates were empty, Talia send Barsad, Chris and Ryan out for various tasks. After the men dispersed, Talia watched Helena clear and wipe down the table before she started to speak.

“Where does a whore hide the key to a safety deposit box?”

“Quit calling her that,” Howard barked.

“Shut your mouth, you are not a warrior and have no voice here,” Talia snapped before she continued to address Helena. 

“It’d be easiest if you got in the car and we drive down to the bank, I’ll make sure you have enough money to live more comfortably than a whore’s daughter deserves.”

Bane watched Helena, studying her profile, wanting to interrogate her until he knew everything about her. 

He was in love with her by the time Talia slapped the table and made Howard and Helena flinch.

“My equitable and nonviolent offer isn’t on the table much longer. Are you going to get in the car and drive to the bank like a good little trollop?” 

“It’s a holiday today, the bank is closed,” Helena finally muttered and watched Talia flush with anger at her simple calendar oversight. 

“Fuck,” Talia shouted and jumped to her feet and fought a wave of nausea as her sour stomach protested the acidic coffee and full belly of food. 

Talia shouted for Chris who came running like an obedient dog and shuttled Howard off at her command. 

She squeezed the bridge of her nose. “I don’t have the energy for this,” she groaned. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” Talia directed at Bane. She paused before she stomped out of the room and spoke as she looked back over her shoulder once she caught Bane’s eyes and spoke in their shared foreign tongue. 

All Helena heard was the aggressive sounding language but didn’t know what Talia had said. 

“Make her talk and get me answers, you just need to keep her alive for now.” 

Talia returned to the guest bedroom at the end of the hall and laid down as her hangover headache made her close her eyes and groan. 

As she napped, back in the kitchen Bane watched Helena plunge her hands into the lemony sudsy water as she washed the breakfast plates and utensils. 

“I know you were lying when she asked you about the safety deposit key,” he said to her back and watched her shoulders tense before she answered. 

“Okay,” she finally said and continued to rinse and load the dishwasher. 

“I know almost everything you said was untrue,” he said when she kept her back to him. 

“I heard you the first time. I offered you money and you said it wasn’t about money.”

“It’s not,” he reaffirmed as she let the sink drain. 

“So, what do you want then?” she asked in an exasperated tone and turned towards him where he remained sitting at the table.

“What?!?” she repeated and dropped the damp dishtowel she’d been holding. 

Bane slowed his breathing and stilled his mind. “How do I even begin to answer that?” he asked himself.

Bane made himself casually stand and take a measured breath.

“This is the only woman you’ll ever love, don’t mess this up,” his mind warned.

“Are you done cleaning up here?” he asked mildly.

Helena nodded and slid down the length of the counter as he approached her.

He paused, understanding but still not liking her fear that only grew as he drew closer. 

“You need to head upstairs.”

“Can I stop and get a few things out of the upstairs desk first?”

Bane nodded and she concentrated on each step as she proceeded up the stairs. 

He watched Helena randomly run her fingertips over the spines of her book collection. “You don’t have to stay in your room,” he said to her back.

“What else would I do?” she asked without turning around.

“You could sit outside.”

“With you?”

“Yes, I’d be nearby.”

“My room is fine.”

Bane clenched his teeth until his jaw popped. “How do I tell her what I want?” he asked himself. 

His irritation at her refusal to turn around when she spoke to him made him act like a juvenile when he spoke to her. “Do you think your bedroom grants you privacy?”

He smiled and felt triumphant as her shoulders tensed. She turned around and his victory turned hollow at the fear in her face as she met his gaze. Bane instantly regretted his tone but didn’t want to recant his words and reveal any cracks in his façade. 

Helena cleared her throat nervously, “what’s the end game here?”

“Honestly?”

Helena nodded.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted before he added. “I know a lot depends on you and your father and the financial details she wants you to provide.” 

Helena felt her breath catch as he closed the door behind him and was certain her heart was going to actually beat out of her chest as he held her wide-eyed gaze and locked the door.

“You know I can’t tell her anything,” Helena started before her words broke and she felt her remaining energy evaporate as she sank onto the sofa and added in a near-incoherent mumble. “You have to know I can’t give that woman anything.”

“That woman is your sister?”

“Half-sister,” she spit tersely.

“Why the hatred?”

“How could there be anything else?” Helena scoffed and slid back on the sofa as he leaned against an oak bookcase. His silence invited her to continue.

“I just learned my parents aren’t my parents and my half-sister is a terrorist and is trying to extort the man I consider my father. I don’t know anything about Talia’s   
father, my apparent biological father.”

“He was a warrior, a solider, a man of honor,” Bane murmured.

Helena nodded and stared at the carpet between her feet, realizing it had been way too long since she’d shampooed the rugs before she whispered raggedly. “You have to know I can’t give her anything.”

“Can you give her enough that she’ll move on?”

“She’ll never leave us alone; it’ll never be enough money, property, deeds.” 

Bane wanted to assure her that couldn’t be true, but he couldn’t be sure. Helena didn’t need him to speak as she continued. “If I give her any kind of opening at all, she’ll have the house and property under her name within the week.”

Bane felt his negotiating tactics wane and he shifted on his feet and leaned back against the door as he tried to maintain a neutral façade while inside his thoughts were roiling.

“You understand that I still need you to provide whatever information is needed because I’m performing a job?”

“Are you not listening to me?” she asked and wiped at her eyes, smearing her eye makeup.

“I am listening to you,” Bane said gravelly as he moved away from the door and rose to his full height as he added. 

“Everything you’re saying is valid, but I am still going to need to you to provide what is needed by Talia.”

Helena shook her head and didn’t have words until he moved in her direction. She leapt to her feet which made him pause. 

“Go back and sit down,” he demanded and any reflexive desire for a rebuttal died before it was born, and she sank back onto the plum colored sofa as he settled in the mismatched burgundy chair across from her. 

“I don’t understand Talia’s sudden descent on our house, her outrageous demands,” Helena said as she shook her head. 

“She is angry that her father proved to be human, a man driven by his basal wan… needs,” he corrected.

“And that’s my fault?”

Her question was surely rhetorical.

“You’re in front of her and her father is in the ground, you’re a place for her rage.”

“And what are you?”

“The instrument of her rage.”

“Is that why you locked the door and are sitting there now?”

“More or less.”

“What’s the ‘more’?”

“Tell me the needed information and we won’t need to have a possible hostile interaction.”

“And the ‘less’?”

“Same answer?”

“Just like that?” she asked on a smirk as she snapped her fingers.

Bane nodded.

“What did she say to you downstairs?” Helena whispered, not trusting her voice to speak any louder.

Her imagination soared at the multiple translations in the space of his silence.

“She essentially told me to obtain the banking information and secure your cooperation,” he said evenly.

“What exactly does that mean?” she asked, proud that her voice didn’t break. 

“It’s my discretion but your words and actions will certainly influence any outcome,” he said and stared at her until she squirmed uncomfortably on the gaudy sofa. 

“You know I can’t tell you anything,” she murmured.

“That’s a perfect example of how your words can influence the situation,” he growled.

Helena tried to slow her breathing before she spoke. “I don’t know what you can possibly expect,” she stammered.

“May I join you on the sofa?” he asked, abruptly changing the climate of the conversation.

“Why?” she asked quickly, her tension going straight to Def Con One.

“I’d like to talk to you more, get to know you,” he said carefully as he slowly stood. 

Helena licked her lips, “why do you want to know more about me? What purpose would it serve?” she asked nervously. 

“Helena?” he asked softly, noticing that she blinked when he said her name. “May I sit?” he asked and closed the distance between himself and the sofa.

Helena nodded as he settled on the last cushion of the sofa, keeping a whole purple square in between them. 

She leaned back and crossed her legs, picking invisible pieces of lint from her denim clad knee. She stopped plucking at the air above her knee and looked up at Bane. “Well?” she said. “What purpose does this serve?” 

As she asked the question, she gestured at the air around them. 

Bane captured her eyes before he spoke. “I think you’re a beautiful and intelligent woman. Last night, I read through a lot of your notebooks and some of your lecture notes that you are working on,” he started and reached out with lightning fast speed and captured her bare-fingered left hand. 

He continued in a low, rapid tone as he urgently squeezed her hand. “After reading them, I, more than anything wanted to spend time with you, talk to you.”

Helena felt varying waves of feelings wash over her. Her notebooks were private, and she was embarrassed at what he might’ve read. Her lecture notes were unfinished thoughts and not something she usually shared.

She flushed at having such an intimate conversation about the thoughts and feelings she had poured into her notebooks about love, lust, and infinite reasons to distrust people.

She brought her eyes back to his when he closed his other hand around hers as he spoke heavily charged words. 

“I don’t know how much trust you have left inside you, but maybe you can see if I could earn the trust that remains?” 

Helena tried to pull her hand back, but he only tightened his grip. 

“Talk to me,” he demanded.

“I’m honestly surprised, you participated in the destruction of Gotham City, are with that woman and her other little cohorts. It now seems we can’t leave; Talia has offered only threats and gave you supposed marching orders and yet you’re not acting like a captor.”

Helena lost her patience with his silence and neutral expression as she continued. “Is this some sort of pick-up technique, you feign interest, get close and then what? Is this something you have set-up with my half-sister?” 

“No, it is not a line or a pick-up technique as you call it. I am not unaware of pick-up lines, but I do not favor them. I simply wanted to sit down and spend time with you. I see in you something that I don’t see in very many women. It has nothing to do with your half-sister,” Bane said without any emotion to his voice to give away what he was thinking. 

“What do you see in me?” Helena asked with a great amount of hesitation. 

“I see a woman who is lonely yet accomplished, a woman that has been hurt and now treads very lightly, if she treads at all.” 

Helena hated that she heard truth in his words and wished she had a glass in her hands to occupy her attention. 

“Come closer,” he murmured and patted the empty cushion between them.

Helena shook her head, “I’m okay here.”

“You’ll be okay here too and I’m not asking,” he said easily, just the sudden surge of heat in his eyes reminding her of his strength and the futility of actually attempting to stop him from doing anything. 

She stiffened when he tugged on her hand but eventually slid across the cushion until she was closer to him but still further than he’d like. 

“Sit next to me properly or you can sit on my lap,” he growled, and she quickly slid closer until the outside of their thighs touched.

Helena cleared her throat as she felt overwhelmed with his warm, masculine scent. “I guess a lot of what you said is true. I’m pretty cautious,” she said as he dropped his arm around her shoulders. She felt the tensile strength as his arm fell around her and squeezed her tighter against his side. 

“Would you let down your guard and let me get to know you?” he asked.

“To what end?”

“For me to show you that I can offer you everything you need.”

Bane relaxed his hold on her, giving her just enough room to look up at him. 

“What can you offer me?” she asked hesitantly. 

“I can offer you companionship, safety, protection, conversation and if you want, affection,” Bane said as he trailed off trying to gauge Helena’s reaction.

She mentally dissected each of his words one at a time, asking herself what each word meant to her. The two words that offered the most conflicting views were protection and affection. 

His dark eyes locked onto hers as she considered her words. He offered her protection and she was certain that he could enforce his words. Under the heat of his gaze she imagined what his definition of affection included and felt a slow blush creep across her face, she uttered a silent prayer to any god that was listening that he wouldn’t comment on her rosy glow. 

When she finally spoke, she wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say, until the words started tumbling out of her mouth. 

“How would you offer me all of that?” she started slowly. “Specifically, how would you offer me protection or even affection?”

Helena was going to not mention affection at all but part of her wanted to want to hear what he had to say. 

“I’ve never had costly needs and have amassed what some would call a small fortune from the work I’ve been completing for decades. You will be safe with me; you won’t have to worry about anyone hurting you ever again.”

Helena believed him when he said that. “And affection?”, 

“What does affection mean to you?” Bane countered. 

Helena surprised them both with a harsh laugh. “I have no fucking idea what anything even means anymore,” as she tried to move away from her and stand. 

“Don’t turn your back on me,” Bane growled and felt his anger spike as he grabbed her upper arm and yanked her back against him.

She yelped in surprise as he caught her wrists and swallowed her in his formidable embrace.

“What do you want from me?!?” Helena shouted and made a futile effort to get out of his arms. 

“I want to know what you need, what you need to feel loved,” he murmured.

Helena felt her breath catch in her chest but knew he wouldn’t release her without a response. 

“I don’t know what I need,” she finally said as she shook her head and renewed her struggling. 

“Don’t run away from me,” Bane growled and shifted his hands, handling her roughly than he intended.

He heard her try to suppress a pained gasp and softened his tone and touch. “Please,” he practically begged and smoothed her tangled hair away from her face. 

Bane searched her wide, frightened eyes, looking for any flicker of hope to cling to in her eyes.

At the exact same moment that Helena parted her lips to speak, as though the planets aligned themselves cosmically for just that moment, downstairs while Ryan   
played with a free sugar-stomping app, one of Howard’s blocked coronary arteries decided to announce its faulty presence loudly.

Ryan dropped his phone as Howard gave a low grunt, grabbed his arm, and fell forward to the plush carpeted floor. 

Ryan shouted out for Chris, Talia, and anyone else listening. 

Talia and Chris rushed into the room where Ryan had rolled Howard to his back but otherwise was completely useless. 

Upstairs, Bane lessened his hold when Talia’s shouts came up the stairs and Helena was able to clumsily slip out of his grasp. 

Helena shook off Bane’s reaching hands and he was soon right at her heels as she tore down the hall and staircase. 

She fought a scream when her eyes fell on Howard’s ashen face. “What did you do to him?” Helena screeched and dropped to Howard’s side and fumbled for his pulse. 

“Why are you just standing there, call 9-1-1,” she said struggling to find a pulse over her own thudding heartbeat.

Talia shook her head at Helena’s sobbing. She directed her words between Chris and Ryan. “Put him in the car.”

“Stop, what are you doing?!?” Helena shouted and pulled at Chris’s arms. 

“Stop your hysterics,” Talia said loudly. “It’ll be faster for us to take him in the car. I’m sure a lot of extra manpower has been needed in …. Gotham after its little… accident,” she added with a smirk.

Bane wanted to intervene somehow, he knew Talia was not being benevolent and taking Howard anywhere to receive medical help. 

He also knew if he uttered a sound that Talia would slit Helena’s throat without a second thought. 

He followed Helena as she followed Chris and Ryan carrying Howard. Everyone was following Talia as she led the way to Howard’s sedan in the driveway.

Talia turned around and held up her hand as Helena tried to climb in the backseat with Chris and Howard as Ryan slipped behind the wheel.

“You’re staying here, I can’t risk you opening your whore mouth,” Talia said coldly.

“You can’t keep me away, he’s my father,” Helena spit at Talia.

Bane suppressed a flinch as Talia’s hand was suddenly in the air, her palm smacked loudly as it came into contact with Helena’s face.

Helena staggered back and would’ve fallen had Bane not semi-caught her. He struggled to keep his expression as he yanked Helena upwards roughly and deliberately made his movements aggressive with the weight of Talia’s eyes on him. 

“Please,” Helena cried weakly as Talia slid onto the passenger seat. 

Bane’s last and final straw was the moment that Talia looked over and smiled at Helena and transformed into Miranda Tate in front of his eyes. He watched her lips curve into smugness and heard her pour her generous philanthropy into her Miranda voice, akin to delivering pleas for money with a side of fifteen thousand-dollar plates of lobster. 

“Please excuse me, I’ve got to get my uncle to the hospital.”

Bane kept his fire inside as Talia raised her eyes to his. Her ego was so engorged she couldn’t see the inferno that Bane had become. 

Talia spoke in their shared tongue. 

“Keep her away from the phone, computer. We’re going to take the old man for a drive and ask him a few questions, I doubt we’ll get much, he looks bad.” Talia glanced down at her diamond-encrusted Miranda Tate watch before she continued in their shared language. “I’ll be back at 2 and I want answers to every pin number and account password,” she murmured and tapped the glass watch face with her Miranda Tate gel-manicured index fingernail.

Bane wordlessly nodded and watched the sedan leave the long driveway. 

He felt Helena sag in his arms as the fight left her as soon as it had arrived. He knew if he let go of her that she would fall to the gravel ground.

“It’s now time to sit down and talk,” he said and shifted Helena until he could lift her in his arms bridal style and carry her back into the house.


	5. Word Ownership

Bane listened as the sound of the departing sedan disappeared. He looked down at Helena’s passed out face as her father was closer to death each passing mile over emergency medical interventional salvation. 

He scrutinized her face with every step up the stairs, not seeing the presence of Talia’s hatred or invisible ugliness in her features. 

Bane nudged open her bedroom door and carried her across the threshold of her room. He first noticed her neatly made bed, the queen-sized bed adorned with a fluffy pastel bedspread. The furniture was a light oaken hue that he walked by as he settled her on the side of the mattress closest to the door. 

Helena moaned in his arms and pushed weakly at his chest as he adjusted the pillow behind her head.

She rolled away from him as he let his eyes wander the room, absorbing every detail. His eyes fell on a trio of photographs next to the bed in matching multi-sized frames. 

The first was a photo of a young Howard and Sylvia holding an infant Helena.

The second photo featured Howard, Sylvia, and Helena at an Easter Egg hunt. Helena couldn’t have been more than ten and her stark white Easter outfit and stockings were already stained with candy as she gave the camera a cheesy, sweet smile.

Bane let his eyes rest on the last picture of Howard and Helena. It was an enlarged photo of the one from the downstairs mantle. He could read the recent Microbiology Doctorate she was holding in the photo. 

His eyes lingered on Howard’s proud, tired face. “I could only save one of you,” he thought as he gently laid his hand on her upper arm. He pulled his hand back when she flinched and moaned under his gentle touch. 

Bane stood up, the mattress squeaking with the relief of his muscular mass. 

He lifted the various bottles of perfumes and lotions on top of her dresser and wound his fingers through the hairs snagged in the plastic bristles of her comb. 

His eyes traveled to the top of her desk and an open lined notebook; the pages filled with her cramped writing.

Bane scanned the pages, devouring her words and doodles in the margins as she began to stir.

He glanced over his shoulder to ensure she was still turned away as he read the most recent writings. There was no date and nothing else on the lined page except several sentences. Bane kept reading and rereading her words, a shift occurring inside him down to the marrow inside of his bones and the viscous fluid surrounding his sturdy joints. 

Dad doesn’t have awfully long, how do I begin to live on my own? Should I just set aside my own needs and wants to not be alone? Is Jen right? She’s always told you you’re going to end up alone and now it’s assured. She said half the time she feels like her and Keith are roommates but at least she’s not alone. When do I stop thinking anyone will hear me, see me? 

He was so immersed in her words and scribbled evisceration of emotions that he failed to hear the sound of her breathing change and didn’t know she was awake until she spoke to his back. 

“Those words aren’t for you to read,” she said before giving a dry cough.

Bane paused; he closed her notebook before he turned towards her. “I could prove everything you wrote untrue, anything you are afraid of, I will squash. I will destroy anything that makes you cry and burn the world down to find anything you’re missing.”

“Don’t say things like to me,” she mumbled and slid off the bed. He began to move away from the desk to intercept her. “I just need to use the bathroom,” she said as she started to raise her hands.

Bane didn’t let her move away from him as he reached out and caught her wrist with lightning speed precision. 

“What am I saying?” he said and squeezed her small wrist in his powerful grip. 

“You know what you’re saying,” Helena said as she tried to tug her wrist free.

“Tell me,” he demanded before he immediately tried to smooth his features and lessened the pressure of his grip. 

“I don’t have to tell you or that crazy bitch anything,” she hissed and stumbled sideways when he suddenly released his hold on her. 

Helena sniffed hard and struggled to not slam the door behind her. 

She used the bathroom quickly, surprised at how full she had let her bladder become. After she washed her hands, she took a doubletake at her smudged makeup   
and messy hair. 

She squatted and rooted around under the sink.

Helena nearly squealed and dropped the bottle of bright blue astringent and wood-handled brush when the door was suddenly pulled open, and he was looming over her from the doorway.

She stood slowly with the cosmetic implements and stayed rooted to the spot, caught in the dreaded spot between fight and flight.  
Freeze.

“You don’t need to stop what you’re doing,” he murmured.

“Can you shut the door…. Please? she managed.

“Of course,” he said and casually stepped closer and shut the door behind him.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” she said and struggled to not try and pathetically get past him. 

“I haven’t had the chance to look around this room for anything yet.”

“Well, I don’t have some kind of secret phone under the sink,” she snapped.

Bane smiled, the small movement transformed his features and she felt a buzz in her skull as new neural pathways were formed and his eyes seemed to see inside of   
her and could freehand the design of her central nervous system in permanent ink. 

He crossed his arms over his muscular chest as he leaned back against the closed door. 

“Please continue,” he said easily. 

Helena pressed her lips together and forced herself to turn around and face the wide mirror, speckled with the spray of toothpaste from the electronic toothbrush.   
She set down the brush and took a deep breath as she soaked a cotton ball and cleaned up her smeared mascara.

Helena stared at him in the mirror after she had cleaned up her face and looked somewhat more from the land of the living. He held her gaze before dropping his gaze to her unused hairbrush and up at the messy mass her hair had become. Her bun which had started off stylishly messy now looked like an actual bird might come and lay an egg with a smaller bird inside of it. 

“Continue,” he said with a casual tone but a lot more weight to his words. 

Helena tugged at her cotton hair band and avoided his eyes in the mirror. 

Bane felt his breath catch and pressed his lips together as her hair tumbled down to settle at her waist, the ends teasing the top of her back pocket.

Helena ran the wood-handled brush from the crown of her head to the very ends of her hair as he was suddenly more aware of how little space was between them than she did. 

He wanted to rip the brush from her hand and use his fingers to comb the silken fall of her hair.

As Bane nearly salivated as he continued watching Helena brush her hair, each minute that passed, Talia moved further away with Ryan, Chris, and the dying professor Lang. 

“He looks bad,” Chris said from the back seat as Howard began to cough wetly. 

“Fuck,” Talia spit and looked over at Ryan. “Find a safe enough place to pull over. I got to get answers out of that bag of skin cells before he croaks.”

Talia pawed through Howard’s pocket and pulled out his leather wallet and nearly screamed to see it just contained a library card and his state identification card which was two months away from expiring.

“What’s your social security number Howie? What’s your date of birth professor?” Talia shouted over the seat at Howard as he began to go into full cardiac arrest.

Talia gave a feral growl and climbed over the seat and straddled Howard’s dying, gesticulating body.

“What is the pin number to your goddamn bank account?” she shrieked as she pounded Howard’s chest that housed his heart ready to perform its final death throes as it had had enough.

Howard gurgled a sound that sounded like “Sylvia,” before he stopped living. 

Talia punched the ceiling of the sedan. “Keep driving,” she said to Ryan. “We need to find some far-out field, anywhere to dig,” she added as she crawled back over the seat to the leather passenger seat. 

As Talia secured her seatbelt into place, back in the bathroom at the home that now belonged to Helena alone, Bane watched her set the brush back on the cluttered counter and reach for a plastic claw clip. 

He spoke before he was consciously ready.

“Stop.”

Helena paused as she wound her hair up in a bun as he remained silent. 

“What?” she finally asked, him a muscular mute. 

Bane found he couldn’t speak, his emotions trussed him up and open like a deer and exposed him stem to stern. 

“I want you to give me what I could easily take,” he thought as he bored his eyes into hers. He couldn’t say those words, he couldn’t say anything. 

Helena watched in slow-motion as he pushed away from the door and came to stand behind her. Their bodies barely brushed against each other.

She held her breath as he pulled the claw clip from her right hand and pulled her left hand free of her bundled hair. 

Bane joined her in holding his own breath as he ran his rough-skinned fingertips through her hair. Her silken strands snagged on the rough skin of his knuckles and cuticles. 

He watched in the mirror as her hair flowed down the front of her shirt, the strands curving around her cashmere sweater covered breasts.

“Where is she taking my father?” Helena murmured as she met his eyes in the mirror.

He held her gaze as he brushed her hair away from her neck before speaking. 

“I honestly do not know.”

Helena closed her eyes and dropped her head as a wave of nausea washed over her. 

“So, what’s the plan now?” she asked as she stared down at the drain.

“It’s now come down to time-sensitive task assignments.”

“And what’s your task?”

“To get the needed financial information.”

“And what’s the time sensitivity for that?” she breathlessly managed as she raised her eyes and met his reflected eyes.

“Before she returns,” he stated as he closed the breath of space between their bodies.

“When is that?”

“In six hours,” Bane said tonelessly as he lowered his face to the curve of her neck. 

“What does she expect when she returns?”

“Complete financial access and cooperation.”

“Will she kill me regardless of what I do?”

Bane slipped one arm around her waist and molded himself against her as he pressed his lips over the rapidly pounding pulse in her neck. 

“If it were up to her, then yes,” he said as he raised his lips, inhaling her warm scent deep into his lungs. 

“What does that mean?” she gasped as his hand spanned her belly, his thumb resting over her sternum. 

“It means tell me that you’ll let me earn your heart,” he murmured and slid his free hand to gather up her hair. Bane pressed his face in the floral scented strands and inhaled deeply before he spoke. 

“I’ll keep you safe,” he groaned as he returned his face to her fall of hair. 

Helena gave a startled flinch when she felt him grow hard against the curve of her bottom. 

“We can take small steps,” he groaned as he gathered her hair into his fist and pulled until she was gasping and standing on her tiptoes as he added.

“Just tell me that you’ll eventually give yourself to me,” he commanded on a growl that obscured his naked vulnerability. 

Bane smoothed his hand down her belly and fumbled at her zipper. 

“Don’t do that,” Helena managed and tried uselessly to shift away from him. 

“Okay, Shhh,” he murmured until she could begin to corral her rapid breathing and stared back at him in the mirror. As soon as he knew he had her full attention he stilled his hand on her zipper and continued.

“Please,” he repeated on a husky whisper as he fell into her reflected eyes, searching in vain for just a glimpse of a potential promise. A flash, a spark he could create hope from. 

“I need you,” he thought and fought to keep excited relief from filling his face when she blinked rapidly a few times and nodded slightly. 

Helena cleared her throat, not trusting her voice as she began to speak. “Can you ….. can you make me a promise?” 

“Yes, anything,” he said rapidly, pouncing on her words a breath after she had spoken them. 

“Promise me you won’t hurt me,” she said quickly, fighting to hold his reflected eye contact.

“I will never handle you roughly again,” he murmured as he dropped his hands to her hips and urged her to turn around. 

Helena reluctantly complied and struggled to not flinch as he cupped her jaw and traced the pad of his thumb over her lower lip as he added. “Why don’t you take whatever time you need in here and then please come back and talk to me.”

As Helena nodded and Bane left her alone, hating to move away from her, Ryan continued to drive the backroads, waiting until the sedan’s GPS lost its signal and then look for a place for an impromptu grave. 

Talia clencher her teeth until her jaw popped and dialed Bane’s burner phone while she still had a decent signal.

He answered on the second ring and she was speaking the moment the call connected. 

“The whore’s father is dead; we’re going to go put him in the ground. I might be home a little earlier. I called the bank and they’re open until five and she needs two forms of ID with the vault key.”

Back in Helena’s bedroom, Bane nodded. “I will have her itemize everything as you asked. She will be dressed and ready to go when you arrive.”

Talia sat up straighter, her ego inflating so fast that if the sedan was a convertible, she would’ve risen like a hot-air balloon.

“She can’t appear too rattled when we go to the bank,” Talia cautioned and listened as Bane chuckled. 

“You’re not going to be able to see where I’ve touched her when she’s wearing clothes.”

“I harbor nothing for that whore, but I can’t risk you injuring her,” Talia started before Bane interrupted her with a tone that was part early man and all raw wet sex   
that made her jealous, afraid, and envious in a split-second.

“Let me clarify, I’m going to fuck her just hard enough to get off, she’ll be able to walk and talk just fine.”

“But, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Talia stammered as Bane’s tone bled to a tone reserved for the near-dead. 

“You want answers and I want to see what her face looks like as I make her come,” Bane said on an empty murmur as he added. “I’ll see you at two pm,” he said as he ended the call. 

Talia stared down at the phone, anger transitioned to nausea and she felt breakfast call up her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut as she thought of Bane’s hands touching that whore. 

Talia looked over at Ryan. “Hurry up, we have to get him in the ground and get back.”

Ryan pressed the accelerator to the floor.

Every passing second, Talia imagined Bane in worsening scenarios with the illegitimate whore.


	6. Sea of Despair

Talia stared down at her phone and immediately hit redial. The call went directly to the factory setting automatic message. She didn’t know that he had powered off his phone the nanosecond he ended the call.

Talia slammed the dashboard. “Can you please hurry the fuck up?!”

She finally dialed Barsad and he answered in the middle of the third ring. 

“Yes?”

Talia’s tongue froze. “What do I say?” she thought. 

“Are you okay?”

“I can’t get ahold of him; I need you to remind him to not kill the whore yet. Make sure she can’t hear and let him know her father died too.”

Barsad nodded, “of course.”

Talia ended the call and Barsad ascended the stairs slowly to the closed bedroom door. He pressed his ear do the door but didn’t hear anything. 

Barsad knocked a couple times, trying to space his knocks into a casual cadence.

Bane pulled open the door a few inches and looked out, “yes?”

“I got a call from Talia, she said she couldn’t reach you.”

“And?” Bane asked without much hesitation.

Barsad shifted nervously on his feet as he dropped his voice to a low whisper. “She wanted me to remind you not to kill her and that her father died.”  
Bane nodded thoughtfully.

Barsad tried to peek through the doorframe without luck around Bane’s massive form.

“Go occupy yourself elsewhere brother.” 

Barsad was soon faced with the closed door and heard the click of the lock engage. He stood in the hallway briefly before making his way back downstairs. 

Talia was soon calling before he reached the last step.

“Yes?”

“Well, did you talk to him? See her?”

Barsad didn’t know what to say. He held his breath as his mind volleyed answers back and forth. 

“Are you there?” came Talia’s shrill tone. 

“I’m here,” Barsad said quickly and coughed to cover any sound of nervousness in his words. “He’s watching her do laundry,” he added lamely.

Talia smiled, “good, make sure he doesn’t kill her.”

Barsad agreed and ended the call.

Talia squeezed her hands into fists, she wanted to tell Barsad to make sure Bane kept his hands of her. She couldn’t make herself sound jealous or speak of disloyal, baseborn acts like her father.

Talia shook her head and tried to push away intrusive thoughts of him handling Helena and using her body to make himself feel good.

As Talia stared out the window and watched the trees grow thicker as the population density thinned, back in the now deceased Professor Lang’s home, Helena squared her shoulders and stepped back into her room. 

Bane’s back was to her as he stood out the window and stared down at the backyard. 

Her window offered a view of the blooming iris and gladiola beds. The zinnias and dahlias had taken over the side of the shed and it looked like it was infected with deep purple, fiery red and burning orange blossoms. 

He turned and looked at her a few heartbeats after he had heard the bathroom door open.

Bane wished he had his mask to hide behind. She had scrubbed and dried her face and brushed her hair into place. His eyes drank in her glossy lips, shining with a balm she had smeared on them.

“What do you want to talk about first?” she finally managed after he remained wordlessly staring at her. A silent god carved out of granite, a warrior pulsing with life. 

“Would you be comfortable talking elsewhere?” he finally asked. He liked the idea of talking to her so close to where she slept. He was finding it hard to breathe being near sheets that had kissed her naked body. 

“I could use some more coffee,” Helena admitted. Her skull had begun to pound with each beat of her heart, and she was feeling nauseated. Hopefully, a deluge of French roast would waterboard her headache.

Helena couldn’t fight a flinch as he moved suddenly. He crossed to the door and opened it before he held out his arm. She half-smiled as an image of him holding a top hat with the flourish of his gesture and small bow. Helena walked towards him, imagining he was holding open the door to a horse drawn carriage.

Bane noticed her smile and tucked it away for later as he followed her down the stairs and across the vast tiled kitchen.

He settled at the kitchen table as she dumped the scorched dregs of the previous pot and rinsed the carafe before starting a fresh pot. 

“Would you like some?” she asked as she nervously kept her hands occupied fiddling with the coffee mugs, carton of half-and-half and pink packets of artificial sugar.

Bane nodded his thanks and pointed to a no-frills cup of black coffee before she joined him at the table. 

Helena took three scalding mouthfuls of the heavily sweetened coffee before speaking. “What happens when she returns this afternoon?”

Bane stared down at the dark surface of his coffee before answering. 

“Theatricality and deception.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’ll need to read from a script, play a role, follow it to the letter or it could mean the end of your life.”

Helena nodded and tried to process his words. She swirled the last bit of her coffee before getting up for a refill and speaking with her back to him. 

“A role? What script am I supposed to read from?”

Bane watched as she opened the cabinet above the stove, needing to stand on her tiptoes as she reached for a slender glass bottle behind a box of stale cereal. 

He nearly choked on his mouthful of bitter coffee as her reaching motion, made the back of her thin sweater raise up and expose the line of smooth skin of the curve of her lower back.

Helena nearly dropped the bottle of scotch when he moved with inhuman speed, positively reptilian in his agility as he was suddenly behind her. He hastily pulled the bottle of booze from her left hand and set it aside before he wrapped her up in his formidable and nearly overwhelming embrace. 

“We need to give her a reality to believe in. She needs to believe that I gave broken you and that you will be dutifully going to the bank and withdrawing anything she wants and signing anything she directs. She needs to think that she has prevailed.”

Bane loosened his embrace when her breath began to come in gasps. 

“What’s the actual reality?” Helena managed as he smoothed his hands down her sides and massaged the outside of her hips, his fingers sure to leave bruises in their wake even through the designer denim. 

“That you’re mine in every way,” he growled raggedly and tugged her hips back against him where she could feel him rapidly hardening against the curve of her bottom. 

Helena moaned and started to struggle when he slid a large had to cup her femininity at the apex of her thighs. Bane groaned in frustration, wanting to rip open her pants and find her wet center. He slid his other hand from her hip up to grip her breast through her cashmere sweater, squeezing urgently as he fought his control to bend her over the table and fuck her until she was crying and writhing in wet pleasure. 

“How can you say something like that, feel something like that?” she managed as he massaged the flesh of her breast harder, his strong fingers kneading her sensitive flesh.

Bane pressed his face the curve of her neck and inhaled deeply as he began to massage intimacy through her jeans. “How do I begin to answer that?” he thought as he moved his palm in circles over her denim covered femininity. 

“Isn’t that woman your …… partner?” Helena managed breathlessly.

He slowed the circles on the outside of her pants, pressing his lips against her neck’s racing pulse. 

“I grew up in darkness and scrapped together a life, Talia was a reason to persevere for a while but there was always a toxic void that grew no matter what service I performed at her direction,” he said before he pressed his lips in a line further up the side of her flushed neck. 

“A different person hides inside Talia; she is a chameleon. I’ve broken my body in service to her but never felt anything other than the blood I spilled. You are the very sun, I felt a spark of life inside of me, lightning striking a desert devoid of even microbial life when I first laid eyes upon you.” 

Bane tried to focus on the warmth of her smooth skin under his scarred lips, the tip of his nose brushing the bottom of her ear lobe as he stopped the slow circles over her intimacy and began to tug at the top pewter button of her jeans. 

He closed his eyes and let himself begin to drown in Helena’s frantic moans, torn between fighting him or letting him find her naked flesh and tight, wet center. 

“You gave me life,” Bane murmured as he took a deep breath and murmured a string of soothing incoherent words against her as she began to tremble as he began to tug on her zipper. He felt foreign feelings of insecurity wash over him. He had faced down squads of armed men almost as dangerous as himself, stared down death, yet, being so close to her, felt like he was trying to scoop up a frightened bird without injuring it. 

“Do you want me to stop?” he groaned and salivated as her panties were the only remaining barrier between his fingers and her bare intimacy.

“Would you?”

“Only if we can return to this moment,” he growled and kept his hand still as he pressed his lips to her neck urgently, his five o’clock shadow scratching her soft skin. 

“Can we mutually agree on when that moment will be?” she managed as she dropped her hand to his wrist and pushed. 

“Yes,” he grumbled and added with a groan. “As long as that moment does come.”

Helena nodded and mumbled an agreeable sound as she tried to ignore the tingling that spilled from his touch on her breast. 

“Do you promise?” Bane asked as he smoothed his hand from her jeans under her sweater and settle over her satin covered breast. 

Helena stiffened and nodded rapidly. 

Bane tugged at the fabric of her bra and teased her hyper-sensitive nipple until it grew hard under his touch. “Do you swear it?” he added as he brushed his thumb in slow circles around the soft flesh. 

“Yes,” Helena managed before he abruptly dropped his hands to her hips. 

“Turn around,” he ordered as he tugged at her supple flesh. 

Helena turned around to face him. 

“Swear it,” he demanded. 

“I swear,” she murmured right before he made her give a sharp squeal as he lifted her off her feet and slid her onto the counter, knocking over a bowl of oranges. 

Bane yanked her close to him, slipping his hands under her thighs and squeezing as he spoke. 

“When Talia returns, you’re going to have to cower in front of her and I might have to act as though I’m hurting you,” he muttered as he smoothed his hands on the outside of her thighs.

“How are you going to create a false narrative around the bank, how do I act like I’m getting a large cash withdraw?” she asked as he pushed her thighs further apart and insinuated himself closer to her warm center. 

Bane reached up a hand and cupped her jaw, brushing his thumb along her full lower lip. 

“That’s nothing you need to concern yourself with,” he said easily. 

“And what about my father? Has she called you with an update? Which hospital did they go to?” she stammered and began to stumble over her words. 

“Shhhh,” he murmured. “I’d rather hear you tell me again that we’ll return to this moment.”

“Yes, we will,” she said and was frozen under the weight of his gaze as something flashed in her eyes that she couldn’t decipher.

“An agreement of this magnitude requires more than a gentlemen’s handshake,” Bane said as traced his index finger along her cheekbones, down her nose and along the line of her jaw. 

“How much money do you want?”

“I don’t want money.”

“Then what?”

“Kiss me.”

Helena’s eyes felt too wide and her throat too dry. “Will you let me go sit down, get to that bottle?” she managed to say without stuttering. 

Bane nodded as he was able to keep his expression neutral, but his heartbeat was as rapid as a caged pterodactyl. 

“Okay,” she whispered and closed her eyes as he brought his lips close to hers. 

He paused, his lips hovering centimeters over hers. “Open your eyes.”

Helena opened her eyes and met his before he closed the minute space between them and met her lips with the lightest press as he held her locked in his gaze. 

Bane held his breath as he waited for her reaction.

Helena was surprised that her desire for his touch outweighed pushing him away and he deepened his kiss when she lifted a hand to his face, carefully cupping his jaw, the coarse hairs tickling her palm as she hesitatingly returned the press of his lips.

“I’ll do anything for you,” Bane thought as he felt her other hand rest over his heart, feeling the strong pounding under his muscular chest.

He honored his word and pulled her gently off the counter and stepped away from her when her feet hit the ground. 

“Thank you,” she mumbled and grabbed the bottle and dumped a healthy amount into her cup before topping it off with fresh coffee. “Can we go sit outside?” she asked, feeling so strange asking to move around in her own home. 

“Please,” he said and stepped in front of her to open the sliding glass door.

They settled in brightly colored chaise lounges as the sun was bright overhead in the clear sky. 

The wind and coastal pressure had kept the toxic fallout smoke from Gotham City to float in the direction of the Lang home. 

Helena sipped her spiked coffee, the alcohol spreading fingers of warmth through her chest and belly. 

She waited until he took a sip before she spoke. 

“Tell me about Talia?”

Bane looked over at her, “what do you want to know?”

“What are you to each other?”

He drained his cup before setting it aside, feeling coffee grounds stuck in his teeth as he spoke. 

“At what point she was nearly everything,” he admitted.

“Nearly?” she asked as she drank the alcoholic coffee quickly, anxious for the soothing touch of the scotch. 

“She’s always been nearly everything. But she’s holds warmth always just out of reach, I am just an animal to her that she keeps chained outside and checks its water bowl occasionally. She’s kept me at her heel for decades for just a kind word from her lips,” he said softly and looked out at the flowering yard. 

“What would you like from me? Is there a way you can reverse your way of thinking?” Helena asked. She almost clapped her hand over her mouth as she realized what she had asked. “Talia is a terrible woman and that just reiterates it, but I feel like I want to help him navigate out of his pain, how can I?” her mind spun wildly. 

Bane looked over at her, he wanted her to repeat what she asked but he also didn’t want to find out if he’d heard her wrong. 

He rose from his squeaky chaise lounge and closed the distance between them in two steps. Helena sat up straighter as he knelt in front of her and grabbed her left hand. 

“I want you to lead me out of the darkness, save me from the sea of despair,” he thought and pressed his lips to her bare ring finger. 

“Give me a place for my heart,” Bane murmured as he lifted his lips and locked her in is gaze as he added raggedly. “Trust me with yours.”


	7. Choices

As Helena’s mind whirred with the combustion of a jet engine, hours away at that point, Talia blew out a relieved breath when Chris and Ryan began to dig in the hard soil of the abandoned earth that used to be an industrious walnut farm. 

Talia paced as the men weren’t moving fast enough for her liking and she shouted in a nearly dead language for them to pick up the pace or she would shred the flesh from their bones after they dug a hole large enough to accommodate three.

As Ryan and Chris began to perspire and breathe heavily, back in the Lang household, Helena felt her breath seize in her chest as Bane turned her left hand over and pressed his lips to her palm. 

Bane murmured against her palm, stammering even in his muffled tone. 

“What did you say?” she whispered and felt her breath escape her again as he raised his eyes to meet hers. 

“I’ve never felt there was hope for anything more than enslavement and nursing my wounds in the darkness. I would’ve killed myself for a kind word from Talia,” he admitted. 

Helena could see the exposed belly of his vulnerability. He didn’t try to hide anything from her as he returned his lips to her palm. He continued on a whisper; his exhale warm against her skin. “The moment I saw you, I questioned everything I have ever known, and I would gladly walk through fire for the opportunity to share your breathing space.”

Helena felt her mouth grow suddenly dry under the weight of his gaze and the heat of his skin seemed to radiate her in a wash of warmth. 

Bane knew even his wordless self was becoming overwhelming and rose to his feet as he pulled her with him. 

“Let’s head inside for a while, the sun is getting to be too much,” he murmured.

Bane led Helena inside, knowing she had no idea how much of his life had been spent in darkness, the kiss of the sun was fleeting. He’d never been trapped in moments of solar inundation that seemed would never end.

He settled back at the table as Helena crossed to the freezer and rooted around for a frozen bagel. Bane watched her struggle to get the frozen halves apart before she settled them on the long setting in the extra wide toaster slots. 

They remained wordless as she fetched a just opened rectangle of cream cheese and jar of strawberry jam. 

Helena reached for the piping hot slices when they popped up from their red coiled crypts and dropped them on a waiting plate. She happened to glance over the moment his eyes fell on her bruised wrist. 

Helena followed his eyes down to the discolored flesh he had caused to happen and tugged her sleeve down to cover it. 

“You need to be prepared that she’s very likely going to ask me to hurt you.”

Bane’s words hung in the air and Helena paused as she spread the sticky strawberry on the porous bagel’s surface. 

“What’ll happen then?”

“I’ll have to make my actions appear believable,” he answered vaguely. 

“What will that feel like for me?” she managed breathlessly.

Bane stared at her so long that she started to squirm. “Please stop that,” she snapped.

“Stop doing what?” he asked as he crossed his arms over his massive chest and leaned back in the chair. 

“What should I expect from you when she’s around?” she asked, ignoring his question before she took a bite of her late breakfast.

“Honestly?” he asked as he walked into the kitchen and leaned casually on the tiled counter. He traced his rough fingertip around one of the square ceramic tiles. 

Helena didn’t trust her words and found she could only nod. 

Bane stifled a yawn, “I’d really just like to take a nap. That sofa upstairs is incredibly uncomfortable,” he admitted.

Helena couldn’t help but chuckle. “It is the most uncomfortable sofa ever, but I just love the color.”

He glanced at the clock on the stainless-steel microwave. “I’m going to go upstairs and take a nap,” he said moving away from the counter and approaching her.

“But you just said the sofa kept you from sleeping,” she mumbled and struggled to stand still.

“Your bed looks cozy,” he murmured as he dropped his voice to a ragged whisper and closed the small distance between them. He laid a hand on the counter on either side of her and leaned down. He spoke with his lips hovering centimeters over hers. 

“What are you expecting if I go upstairs with you?”

Bane raised an eyebrow and pressed his lips to the barest corner of her mouth. “When…… you come upstairs, I’d like to take a nap with you, I will not take anything you don’t want to freely give,” he murmured and felt his groin grow tight as her warm scent filled his lungs. 

Helena felt her chest tighten and her breath barely fall from her lips at his close proximity. She was inundated by his woodsy, masculine scent and faint brush of menthol on his exhale. 

“Will you come upstairs with me?” he asked on a breath and pressed his lips to hers before she could answer.

A moan slipped from Helena’s mouth and into his as he kissed her breathlessly. He moved his hands from the sink and massaged the flesh of her sides as though he was palpating for a tumor. The rough movements of his hands were actively causing bruises to blossom on the skin under her thin sweater. 

“Yes,” she managed on a gasp when he lifted his lips and reached for her right hand. 

Bane paused as he led Helena from the kitchen when they reached the bottom of the stairs as the front door opened and Barsad walked in from the bright morning.  
Barsad let his eyes trail over Helena’s frozen form and where Bane had a hold of her. 

“Do you have something to report brother?” Bane asked.

Barsad shook his head and took his eyes off of Helena to look at Bane. 

“No, I just need to get something to drink before I continue.”

“Then let your eyes rest somewhere else brother,” Bane said in a tone that held no anger, but a promise of certain death should his gaze linger.

Barsad bobbed his head, instant understanding flooding his central nervous system and he hurried past them.

Helena blinked at Bane as he renewed his tugging on her wrist and she struggled to keep up with him on stairs she’d been navigating her whole life. 

Bane practically pulled her off her feet as they drew closer to her room, he wanted to have her closer and return to a place of intimacy. 

He slammed the door and turned to face her. 

The weight of his gaze made her feel exposed and she mumbled an excuse to use the bathroom and caught her breath as he waited more than a few minutes and then knocked on the door. 

“Are you okay?” he called through the closed door.

“Yes,” she said and splashed water off her face. “I’ll be right out,” she added as she dried her face.

Helena counted to ten and blew out a slow breath before opening the door to find him standing in front of her. 

Bane stepped aside and let her pass. She went and sat on the sunny window seat and watched him pull back the bedspread and adjust the pillows. 

Helena felt her heart skip a beat when he locked the door and began to slip out of his clothes. She felt her face turn positively fuchsia when he was soon standing in front of her in a pair of snug-fitting royal blue boxer briefs. His vascularly striated thighs were strong and scarred as he walked over to her and held out his hands   
towards her. 

Helena scooted backwards on the window seat cushion and crossed an arm over her chest. 

“Shhhh,” he murmured and dropped to his knee in front of her. “Come lay down with me, I will not make any demands of you.”

Helena sniffed hard and slowly slid towards him until he gave her enough room to stand. She kicked off her shoes and slid under the covers he held up. She tried to not tense as he shifted until he could mold himself behind her. 

She closed her eyes and adjusted the pillow under the side of her head as he moved her hair away from the side of her neck and pressed his lips to the flushed flesh.

Helena couldn’t help but flinch when he settled his hand on the natural curve of her waist and then smoothed down the side of her denim encased leg.

“Do you know what else has changed the moment our worlds collided?” he murmured as he shifted until he could press her onto her belly and began to massage her back.

“Hmmmm?” she sounded as his fingertips sought out each point of muscular tension.

“My trust in my control.”

“In what way?” Helena managed as he slipped his hands under her sweater and continued his circular massaging against her bare skin. 

“Around you, I’ve never questioned my control as a solider, a warrior. I’ve never wavered under leadership and yet I struggle to hold loyal to words still new with sound,” he admitted and rubbed his thumbs up the wings of her shoulder blades. 

Helena couldn’t find her words as he pressed his fingertips down the center of her spine and teased the curvature of her lower spine. She gasped and murmured breathlessly intelligibly as he unclasped her bra and smoothed his palms over her bare back, urging her sweater further up and out of the way. 

“Can you do something for me?” Bane growled.

“Hmmm?” she managed as he continued to massage the sore muscles deep in between her shoulder blades. 

“Turn over.”

She was reluctant to have the massage stop but rolled over to look up at him.

Helena hadn’t realized he had taken off his boxer briefs until she saw his hard cock between his legs, practically bobbing with anticipation. 

Helena felt an instant flood of adrenaline and futilely attempted to scramble away from him.

“I swear I won’t take anything; I just want to hold you close,” he uttered on a ragged groan. 

Helena shook her head but had nowhere to escape being trapped under him.

“Come back here,” he demanded.

Helena shook her head. “What if it ends up being one of those moments where you lose control?” 

Bane shot out a hand and yanked her further underneath by the waistband of her jeans. “I swear I will not take anything from you,” he whispered as he cupped her jaw and traced his thumb over her lower lip.

Helena slowly nodded, “do you always sleep like this?”

“Naked?” he asked in a feral tone that made a twinge throughout her nervous system.

She nodded through her blush. 

“Yes,” he growled and danced his fingertips down her neck. “What about you?”

“Pajamas,” she said and couldn’t avoid his gaze as he gave her a small smile and looked away from her for a moment to tap on his square smart watch.

“I’m setting an alarm for just under two hours, that still leaves time to talk about the script.”

Helena’s struggling was immediately reignited when he began tugging at her jean’s metal buttons. 

“You just promised to not do this,” she shouted, anger fanning her adrenalin as she pushed at his hands. 

“I can’t risk you running away if I nod off,” he growled and easily shook her hands off as he yanked her pants open and fumbled the zipper open. 

“Where could I even go, there’s not even a car here I can take,” she stammered and tried to slap him but couldn’t extend her arm much under him. She only succeeded in roughly resting her palm on his cheek as he jerked at her pants. 

“I swear I won’t try anything, just stop,” she said shrilly as he growled in frustration and grabbed her wrists and pinned them over her head. 

“Then I’ll need you to handcuff you to the bed so you can’t go back on your word,” Bane murmured and dropped his lips to hover over hers. “Which would you prefer?” he asked and added on an all-male chuckle. “I’m sure you can guess which choice I’d make.”

As a blush that rivaled the sun lit up Helena’s face and made Zeus smile down from Mt. Olympus, hours away, Talia continued to watch Ryan and Chris struggle with Howard’s grave. The soil was hard from the recent long spell without rain and tree roots had made progress slow in getting depth as they had to pause and hack at the gnarled buried wood. 

The process was taking too long for Talia and she wanted to beat both men to death with either or both of the shovels and leave them to rot on the ground for the rodents and carrion eaters. 

Talia returned to the sedan and cranked the air conditioner as she dialed Barsad for the eighth time. 

They exchanged a few words and she hung up angrier than when she had dialed when he told her the same thing as every time before. 

“He’s in the kitchen with the woman watching her work and telling her what you expect upon your return.”

As Barsad went back to hacking through a government firewall, upstairs Helena continued to struggle in Bane’s unbreakable grip. 

Bane switched his grip on her wrists to one of his large hands and gripped her chin with the fingertips of his free hand and traced the rough pad of his thumb across her lower lip. “Tell me which one you’d prefer, and I’ll gladly accommodate,” he rasped as he felt his desire began to overtake his control. 

Helena gave an exasperated huff and sagged against the mattress. “I don’t want you looking at me,” she finally mumbled, trying but not able to avoid his piercing gaze and the sudden questions that filled his eyes.

Bane held her gaze as he trailed his fingertips down the length of her neck and danced down the front of her body, the cashmere soft under his moving touch.

“Let go,” she murmured urgently and shook her restrained wrists as he began sliding her sweater upwards. 

Bane paused his hand on her hemline and released her wrists after what seemed an inordinately long time but in actuality was less than five seconds.

Helena’s wordless relief was obvious as he pulled the bed linen up and around them. She was further thankful when he kept most of his weight off of her as she slowly slipped out of the rest of her clothes, her limbs heavy with the effort. 

“Try and let yourself relax,” Bane murmured as he shifted them around until he could crush her to the front of his body. She gasped when their naked skin kissed.  
Helena laughed despite her myriad of emotions at his casual suggestion. 

“Relax? How can I even begin to relax?”

Bane kept his smile mild as he smoothed her hair off her clammy forehead as she struggled to catch her breath between being physically compressed under the weight of his formidable frame coupled with the plethora of emotions that swirled within her frontal lobe. 

Helena doused his rapidly surging lust when she turned her head sharply to the side and zeroed in on her family photographs next to the bed. 

“She didn’t take my father to the hospital?” she asked and answered as his hands paused against her. 

Bane stayed quiet as he followed her gaze to the picture of the proud parents with the newly adopted Helena. He shifted and smoothed his hands behind her thighs until he could yank her further down in the bed and slide closer to her intimate center.

Bane started stroking his hands up and down the outside of her thighs as he murmured against the curve of her neck. “I didn’t plan on such a blunt delivery. Your father has passed, I might not be able to find the precise spot for you to mourn,” he breathed and felt a wave of tension possess her.

Bane was surprised to feel the rigidity in her limbs subside as she murmured something unintelligible. 

He gripped her chin and brought her eyes to meet his. “What did you say?”

Helena sniffed hard as fresh tears fell from the corners of her eyes. “It was going to be sooner than later regardless of that woman,” she repeated as she tried and failed again to move away from him. 

Bane let the bulk of his weight pin her to the mattress, his stiff cock pushing intrusively into the supple flesh of her inner thigh. “Your father was ill?” he huskily whispered. 

Helena nodded and cleared her throat before she spoke. “Stage four kidney and bone cancer. He was close to palliative care,” she added. 

Bane waited a few minutes after she spoke and let her remain in her silence as he tried to calm the inner torrential lustful flood he was holding back with sealing wax and clothespins. 

As Bane tried to gather his words and not fall into a lustful hypnosis at the press of her naked flesh and ultra-closeness of her wet femininity, hours away, Ryan and Chris finally reached an acceptable depth for the impromptu grave.

Talia crossed her arms and found some satisfaction as Chris and Ryan unceremoniously dumped Professor Howard Lang’s still warm body into the hole.

She tapped out Barsad’s phone number and hit end quickly before the call connected. She knew she was starting to sound a little nutty and blew out a frustrated breath as Ryan and Chris began the fatigued task of filling in the hole they had made. 

Talia mumbled under her breath in the near-dead language as she dialed Bane’s number three times in a row to be greeted with zero rings and the automated message. She nearly hurled her phone to the unforgiving ground but ended up shoving it deep in her pocket. 

As Talia resumed sitting in the car with the air conditioner turned to high, back at the Lang household that now belonged solely to Helena, Bane cleared his throat before he spoke in a gravelly whisper. Each word was measured and deliberate, he was close to forgetting how to speak. 

“I’ll give you time to mourn your father before,” he trailed off and pressed his lips to her closed eyelid. 

“Before what?” she asked breathlessly as he shifted and kissed her other closed eyelid, the fringe of her eyelashes tickling his lips. 

“Before you give me the chance to earn your heart and every part of you,” he groaned as he danced his fingertips down the front of her body and made slow circles around her belly button with his index finger. 

“What about Talia?” she asked before her voice broke. 

“I will resolve that, put her out of your mind,” he murmured and pressed his lips to hers when she protested. “I’m speaking of a time past that, a beginning,” he added when he lifted his lips.


	8. Necessities

As Bane’s words filled the front of her mind, downstairs in the roomy kitchen of the Lang household, Barsad’s phone rang with yet another call from Talia.

“Yes ma’am?” he answered.

“Give me an update,” she demanded shrilly. 

“He is making her separate papers into piles and there are lots of post-it notes of places for you to sign, I keep hearing the word transfer and deposit,” he baldly lied. 

Talia smiled as she watched Ryan and Chris rain sweat as they filled in the hole, her inflated ego spoke before she entirely thought it though. “How’s my ‘sis’ doing?   
Has he knocked her around, scared her a little?”

Barsad smiled broadly and contained laughter as Talia’s jealously was on full display and Barsad liked to play with explosives. He wished he could’ve seen Talia’s face as he dropped his voice to a pulsing, all-male heavy chuckle. “She’ll be afraid to be around large farm animals for a while.”

“We’ll be back a little early, 1 at the latest,” she hissed and ended the call as Barsad was still chuckling. 

Talia fumed and she mentally willed Chris and Ryan to possess more ability as they worked as fast as they could. 

As Talia clenched her hands into fists, Barsad took the spiral stairs two at a time and paused before knocking in a rapid pattern on Helena’s closed door. 

Bane heard and understood the urgency in Barsad’s coded knocking and growled with frustration as he slipped back into his clothes, allowing her to keep the majority of her nudity covered. 

“I need to address something, do not leave that spot,” he ordered and went and joined Barsad in the hall, allowing no glimpse of his naked goddess. 

“What is it brother? Bane asked as he closed the door behind him.

“Talia will be back at least an hour earlier than previously thought.”

Bane narrowed his eyes at Barsad’s sudden lapse into silence. “What else is weighing on you brother?”

“I lied to her,” Barsad admitted.

“About?”

“About you, that woman, what you two are doing and now she’s returning, I don’t know if I should run, you should too with whatever you’re doing up here.”

Bane laid on strong hand on the muscled cap of Barsad’s shoulder, “do not run brother. Let us buy some time together, call Talia and tell her you are bringing a stack of papers for her to sign. We’ll later shred anything she signs. Tell her I ordered privacy so I could work in peace with her sister and have no witnesses to my methods. I will deliver answers directly to her feet.”

As Barsad and Bane continued to huddle in deadly hallway discussion, behind the closed door, Helena counted to thirty and changed into a set of draw string lounge pants and long-sleeved shirt. 

Bane watched Barsad walk away and dial Talia before he returned to Helena’s room, closing, and locking the door behind him.

His eyes first found the bed empty; the window seat held the same vacancy, but his breath immediately returned when he heard the sink squeak off in the bathroom.

Bane pushed open the door as she was washing her face again. Helena’s eyes looked up and found his as she dried her face. “Do you every knock?”

“I told you to stay where you were,” he countered. 

“I was cold,” she murmured lamely and looked anywhere but him.

Bane was about to reply when her phone chirped three times in rapid succession as she received a text message. Helena met his eyes in the mirror as the chirping repeated and he backed out of the bedroom to read from the rectangular screen.

“What wine did you need us to bring again?”

Helena was already shaking her head before he finished reading and he didn’t need to wait long for her to elaborate. “That’s my soon to be Aunt Beverly, she’ll be my   
Uncle Keith’s third wife. She’s a doll but I completely forgot they were coming over for cocktails and dessert. I was going to cancel a couple days ago and forgot.”

“You were going to cancel even before our arrival?”

Helena nodded and dabbed beads of water from under her eyes.

“Why?”

“My boyfriend was finally coming over; we’ve never been able to coordinate a meeting, it was just too much pressure.”

“You have a boyfriend?”

“No,” she said and sniffed hard as she folded and refolded the washcloth. “I don’t have much in my life, for a while I had my father to keep my head above water. Now   
he’s gone,” she murmured and trailed off into something intelligible and flinched when her phone rang with a shrill classic game show tune. 

“Bev” he read from the caller ID. 

“I should probably get that,” she murmured. “I’ll tell her dad is really sick.”

Bane held the phone just out of her reach. “I can buy another day away from Talia and be your dinner companion tonight. We have plenty of time to get to know each other more,” he trailed off huskily. 

Helena shivered as his pupils bled back and he let her touch the phone but not take it from him. “Yes?” he growled.

Bane let her have the phone and she answered it on the third ring as she nodded. “Hi Bev, I’m sorry I missed your message, I was in the middle of cleaning the oven and there’s no breaks with that kind of mess,” Helena answered jovially.

“Oh darling, I’m so happy to reach you, more so that we’re finally meeting your man. Your uncle wants to bet me that this guy is a total figment and maybe you really ‘like’ girls.”

Helena rolled her eyes as Bev hurriedly added. “I support you though honey on any decision you choose to make.”

“Thanks Bev, no tonight will be wonderful and please bring some robust reds, I have some apricot brandy and a few crisp whites.” 

Bane watched Helena chuckle. “Ah-ah, the menu is a secret, but you will love it, yes 6:30 is great.”

Helena passed her phone back.

“That sounds formal.”

“It is,” she chuckled. “We planned it a long time ago but right now it might be a good distraction. How are you going to get Talia away for a whole day?”

“Barsad has already spoken to her and after she is free from her current situation, she will join Barsad with Chris and Ryan at the public library that has weekend and holiday hours. The drive back would be too long and Barsad is going to ensure that everyone is too fatigued with some powdered opiate additions to their coffee.”

“That’s a lot of work to buy a day,” Helena finally admitted and muttered something he almost heard.

“What did you say?”

“I asked, is it worth it?”

“It is now and will only continue to be so.”

Helena turned and leaned back against the counter as he parroted her by leaning against the doorframe that creaked in protest under his weight.

“What are you wearing to this formal event?” he finally asked. 

Helena cleared her throat and pointed past him at a sapphire blue, body smoothing dress. The thin straps would look wonderful over her prominent collarbones and the give of the fabric would mold to her breasts like a lover’s touch. 

Bane pulled it from the closet and felt his cock twinge with admiration at the beautiful silken fall of fabric.

“Put it on,” he ordered.

“It’s a little early to get ready for dinner,” she said nervously as she added. “I haven’t even cooked yet; I don’t want to spill anything on it.”

“Then give me a preview of what it will look like to spend the evening with you,” he growled. 

Helena nodded as she hung the dress on the towel bar and looked over when he remained blocking the only exit. 

“What?” she finally said when he stayed silent. 

“I told you to put the dress on.”

Helena felt the edge of the bathtub behind her calves and debated sitting as the limited air space was suddenly very apparent. 

“Alright,” she mumbled as she tiredly shook her head and reached for the couture gown. 

“Okay,” she stammered as she yanked the smooth gown off the plastic hanger. “But you need to give me some privacy to change.”

“I’m still not allowed to look at your naked body?” he asked bluntly as he slowly and deliberately ran his gaze from the crown of her head to the tip of her baby toe. 

Helena felt color fill her face and crushed the gown to her chest as though it could be a fabric shield as he continued.

“You guard your body as though you’re hiding something,” he growled as he stared at her before adding in the wake of her continued silence. 

“Are you?” he repeated on a husky whisper.

“Am I what?” Helena asked, relaxing her hold on the dress. 

Bane’s eyes zoomed in on the nanosecond she relaxed her grip on the gown and snatched it from her hands before she could blink.

Helena felt torn between a scream and a sob, “what is the point of all this?” she finally asked and sank to the edge of the tub. 

“Are you hiding something?” Bane repeated as he replaced the gown on the hanger which left his hands free.

Helena smacked her palms on the edge of the tub before she rose to her feet and planted her hands on her hips. She was prepared to try and bargain and as she took   
a deep breath to process, his large hands were suddenly around her upper arms. His strong fingers bit into her smooth flesh as he yanked her towards him

“Let me go, I’m not hiding anything,” she screeched as he nearly lifted her off her feet, her tip toes barely kissing the linoleum. 

“I don’t believe you,” he mumbled under his breath as he adjusted his grip and flung open the bathroom door. Helena screeched as he half-carried her across the room and unceremoniously dumped her on the messy surface of the bed.

She yelped as he closed a hand around her ankle as she tried to retreat and scrambled after her until he compressed the breath from her lungs as he pinned her to the mattress.

As the sound of tearing fabric met her ears, she futilely tried to get out from under him.

He grunted his frustration when she clawed and scratched at him as he roughly rolled her over and kept one large hand flat in the middle of her back, rendering her unable to move out from under him.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you’re keeping from me?” he grumbled and yanked at her pants. 

“I swear I’m not hiding anything,” Helena shouted as much as she was able.

“You’re hiding your body from me,” he mumbled as he yanked at her pants and smoothed his hand over the bared curve of her bottom.

She lapsed into silence and turned her face away as he continued. “Why?”

Helena’s breath came raggedly as he shifted around until he could push her thighs apart and yanked up and back on her hips. She cried out softly as he moved close enough for the zippered front of his pants to brush against her bare, intimate skin. 

“Why?” he repeated and instantly regretted how roughly he pushed her hands to the side and fumbled his cock free. Bane breathed in some relief as he freed his rigidity and returned to being close to her nakedness. 

“Nothing I want to talk about,” she muttered.

Helena jumped when she felt the warmth of his hardness press against the curve of her bottom. 

“Wait,” she murmured as he slumped against her back and molded himself against her. 

“I need to apologize,” Bane grunted and lightly bit the back of shoulder.

“For what specifically?” she snapped. So tired, afraid, and completely feeling like she wasn’t in control of anything. 

“You’re the recipient of what I’m learning about myself,” Bane grumbled as he pressed his lips to her shoulder blade. 

“I am a warrior and a soldier,” he whispered against the protruding knobs of her spine as he continued. 

“But I’m also a man with wants and needs,” he added raggedly and spit a healthy glob of spit into his palm and began to stroke his cock until it was painfully hard. 

Raggedly gasping as he added, “I know why you look and feel so unhappy,” he rasped and roughly rolled her over to look up at him, pinned beneath him by the weight of his formidable frame. 

“I understand you,” he groaned and buried his face in the curve of her neck, pressing his lips over the racing pulse under the smooth skin of her neck.

Helena shook her head as her breath was forced from her lungs. She managed a gasp that came with an adjoining flush when she felt the head of his rigidity push assertively against her inner thigh. “You don’t know anything about me,” she spit up at him and managed to keep her chin lifted in a defiance that only further sprayed a bombastic flash flood of napalm over his already boiling over lust. 

“I do though,” Bane struggled to say in a soothing tone and lessened his ironclad grip on her supple flesh as he continued lowly.

“I feel how alone you are, how you crave attention but always remained completely unfulfilled,” he growled and nipped his teeth in a line down her neck until she was struggling between gasping in pleasure or fear. 

“I have moved through this world in the very same way,” he admitted as he spread her thighs wider and dropped his head to kiss the trembling skin above her navel. 

She couldn’t help but giggle when he darted his tongue into her belly button and then froze as he kissed a path down to her femininity. 

Helena didn’t have words as Bane continued speaking easily and shifted until he could tease her wet intimate folds. His hot exhale teased her wet center as he spoke before he shoved his tongue into her tight innermost feminine privacy.

“You and I were created for each other on a cellular level,” he murmured when he lifted his mouth before making slow circles with his tongue around her clit which grew more sensitive with each slow fleshy revolution. 

Helena couldn’t think, his touch drowning her in a lustful fog so thick that she couldn’t see her hands in front of her face. “You can’t think something like that,” she managed lamely and ended up gripping his shoulders as he made her pleasure begin to rise. 

“I can though,” he murmured against her and traced his index finger at her tight opening as he looked up the length of her nearly naked body and caught her eyes.   
Bane continued when he had her full attention. 

“You want me, and I understand your fear,” he groaned in a gravelly tone as he kissed the skin right above her intimacy as he continued. “Your body wants me, and I understand your hesitation,” he growled as he slid his finger slowly in and out of her, feeling her tight walls pulse around his thick finger.

Helena could only moan as she was trapped under his gaze and touch as he continued. 

“Don’t you feel it inside too?” he rasped as he shifted until he could insinuate himself until their intimacy was near wetly kissing. 

Helena was too startled to speak when he gripped her hips and forced her thighs further apart, exposing her intimacy to his gaze. “I thought for a long time if a warrior’s eyes fell upon a woman, it was out of weakness and punishable, but I now know that’s not true.” 

Helena relaxed somewhat as he brushed at her hair and pressed his lips to the curve of her neck as he added. “I now understand what the men I have put to death could not articulate.” 

Helena closed her eyes when he cupped her jaw. “How many men have been inside you?”

Bane read her facial expression wrong and assumed she was withholding a large number; he felt a surge of typical male jealously and didn’t give Helena a chance to answer before he shoved himself inside her with a grunt. She cried out as her snare drum tightness was forced to stretch around his sudden, rigid fullness. 

Bane soon had his answer to how many had never come close to even touching her. 

Helena clamped a hand over her own mouth to muffle her cry as he aggressively plunged his cock inside her wet center. Her warm intimacy was forced to accommodate his uneven thrusts as he lost himself to the feeling of her wet tightness around his hard cock. 

Bane tried to slow his hips as Helena tried to keep from crying as he forcefully filled her until she thought she might never breathe again. 

In the midst of Bane attempting to slow his pace, the tip of his cock brushed her inner pleasurable spongy center and made her spine bow and her already tight cunt walls tightened further around his invading cock as she succumbed to an Everest-Olympus sized orgasm. 

It was his turn to try to keep a hold of his breath as he pushed his face against the curve of her neck as he kept his grip on her body unbreakable as she rode out her physiological bliss.

“I knew you’d feel better than I could’ve imagined,” Bane grunted as he made her gasp with the renewed rough plunging of his cock. 

Bane cupped her cheek and increased his rhythm as his own orgasm appeared on the horizon. 

“I know you’re going to look ethereal in that dress,” he rasped as he pumped his hips against her, his cock filling her tight opening with abrupt urgency, making tears threaten Helena’s eyes at the end of each deep plunge. 

“What would it take for you to willingly give yourself to me?” he murmured raggedly.

“You’re going to be beautiful,” Bane groaned as she remained wordless as his fingers tightened so hard on the supple flesh of her hips that she’d have bruises within hours. 

“What will it take?” he panted as he increased his pace and rhythmically squeezed her breast with a free hand when she murmured incoherently.

“Talk to me,” he demanded on a strangled gasp.

“You think it’s that easy of an answer,” she managed and chuckled. Helena’s genuine laugh made her inner vaginal walls tighten around his cock as he slid in and out of her. 

Bane gasped, “no, of course I know it can’t be an easy answer. Tell me I have certain hope,” he begged and felt his pleasure began to coil until an explosion of his nervous system was eventual. 

Helena nodded and Bane felt his balls rise up tight to his body, but he needed to hear more.

“Tell me what you’ll give me.”

“Do you swear that crazy bitch is no longer a problem?”

Bane filled her slowly, moving centimeters at a time until he stole her breath from where his cock brushed in its depth. 

“She is not worth the reflection of thought.” he groaned.

Helena spoke on words broken by a gasp at the end of each of his deep thrusts. “We can cook dinner together and you’ll be my boyfriend at dinner,” she moaned as   
her innermost femininity began to ache from his enthusiastic plunging. 

“Then what?” he managed and knew his fall into an abyss of pleasure was imminent as she answered quicker than he could’ve hoped for.

“Then you stay here, as, my boyfriend,” Helena whispered as he caught her in his gaze. His body shuddered and he came inside of her before she had finished speaking. His cock spasmed in her tight, soaking wet opening as he spilled his sticky cum deep inside of her. 

Bane remained firmly inside her and murmured against her flushed neck. Helena didn’t hear what he whispered, and he pretended to not hear her request to repeat himself. 

“You’re my goddess. I will grow pomegranate trees and slip the seeds under your mattress until your heart is completely mine.” 

As Bane remained firmly inside her, hours away, Chris and Ryan finished the burial detail and followed Barsad’s urgent directions to go sign needed forms right away. 

Barsad had skimmed a tax law online article and rattled off some believable figures that hooked Talia by the financially naïve nose. 

As Talia, Ryan and Chris continued to further drive hours away in the wrong direction, back in Helena Lang’s bedroom, Bane shuddered as he pulled his softened cock out of Helena and settled alongside her. 

Helena’s breath came raggedly as he pulled her close, their sweat-covered skin kissing.

Bane buried his face in the curve of her neck as she struggled to catch her breath.

“Are you okay?” he whispered as she remained silent.

“Mmm hmmm,” she murmured and tried to sit up.

“Where are you going?” he growled and tightened his arms around her. 

“I’d like to clean up, put myself together before Bev and Keith come over. I have a lot of cooking to do too in addition to not looking like I’ve been crying,” she whispered and was thankful to any deity listening when he released his hold on her. 

Helena yanked the top sheet around her nudity and closed the bathroom door behind her. She didn’t bother locking it because she knew nothing would truly stand in his way.

She scrutinized her reflection and reddened, puffy eyes as he settled more comfortably on the orthopedic mattress and adjusted the pillows behind his head.

Bane drifted into a light nap as Helena took a long shower and spent a longer time washing her hair, scrubbing her scalp until it tingled under the spray of water. 

For the next half an hour, Helena took extra time from scrubbing her fingernails to cleaning behind her ears and Bane lightly napped under the designer bed linen. 

As Talia and company continued to proceed to the necessary location to sign the apparently very important documents, Helena eventually emerged from the bathroom on a floral-scented cloud of steam.

She had slipped into a pair of stretch pants and a thin grey hoodie with her favorite football team’s logo. 

Helena found Bane dressed and waiting for her. She looked past him and saw that he had made the bed and pulled back the covers for later. 

“After you,” Bane finally said and gestured grandly towards the door. 

Helena struggled to walk at an even pace as he followed her downstairs to the kitchen. 

Bane settled at the table as Helena began to procure items from the pantry, fridge, and pre-heat the oven. 

“What’s something you’d like me to know about yourself?” he asked from where he sat at the table and rolled the edges of the fabric placemat.

He watched her pour herself a healthy glass of alcohol. 

“I like scotch, would you like some?” she asked after she took a large swallow and felt warmth spread throughout her chest and belly.


	9. A Vulnerable Slip

Bane nodded his thanks at her offer for the potent amber alcohol. She passed him a squat cut-crystal glass more than half-full. 

He couldn’t help the repugnance at the decadent glassware wash over his face, he was unable to conceal the disgust at the heavy glass for people that lived in Ivory Towers and filled in holes in the ground with poison and stony soil. 

Helena filled her glass again and forced herself to take two burning swallows before she spoke, her words sharp, capable of penetrating flesh.

“My great-grandmother managed to keep those through one of the camps, there were originally four, but she left Dachau alive with two glasses and I only use them when,” she paused and added acidly. “When I’m trying to make a situation mean something, when I want to assign significance.”

Bane rose to his feet and quickly closed the distance between them. He pulled her glass free of her hand and wrapped her up in his embrace. The strength of his arms and masculine aroma was suffocating and nearly overwhelming, Bane cut off any chance for Helena to speak as he crushed his lips to hers. 

Bane felt the delicious sensation of Helena’s breasts pressed against his broad chest as one of his hands traveled up the length of her spine, over the protruding vertebral bumps on the back of her neck and up to cradle her skull in his rough palm. 

His strong fingertips wove through the silken fall of her hair, individual strands snagging on his ragged cuticles. 

“That was a trained reaction,” Bane admitted softly before he returned his lips to hers. “I was broken to believe all items of decadence and worth belonged to the opposition,” he murmured, his lips centimeters over hers. Helena was breathless under his admission, his ragged exhales washed over her flushed face. 

Helena felt her body fighting a plethora of reasons to want to fight or flight, she was dangerously stuck in frozen, an uncertain place.

Bane saw her teetering on the precipice and whispered as he smoothed his hand from the silken fall of her hair. He cupped her jaw, brushing his thumb across her lower lip as he murmured. 

“I accompanied Talia here to shatter your life before I knew who you were, I ceased to question her and cannot change much of anything that has happened, but I vow to create a way for you to live again.”

As Helena let Bane’s words filter through her brain and absorb each syllable, further and further away, Talia tapped her fingertips on the tops of her thighs as Chris pulled the car into a numerical chain hotel. 

Talia’s eyes found Barsad filling the faux wood ice bucket near the ground floor room. 

Barsad fixed his face into one of subservience and didn’t try and meet her eyes. Talia felt an overinflated sense of self at Barsad’s perceived penitence. She nodded her approval as she walked past him into the sparsely decorated room. 

Barsad suppressed the urge to smile broadly when she poured herself a cup of coffee and dumped a handful of the artificially sweetened filled blue packets into the ceramic cup. Ryan and Chris followed suit with coffee and some of the open whiskey. 

Barsad’s generous buffet included some breakfast pastries and Talia felt smugness engorge her ego as she emptied her mug. She had no idea as she refilled her mug that he had added a nearly tasteless opiate powder to both the coffee and alcohol. He had even swirled some into the cream cheese that was adorned with a bright green pile of diced chives. 

Barsad drank from his personal flask that he’d carried close to his side for decades and watched the trio noisily eat and drink, simply waiting for them to go to sleep for a while. 

As Talia slowly sipped her spiked coffee, back in the sprawling Lang kitchen, Helena wiggled a hand free from Bane’s massive embrace and laid her palm over his. 

She nodded, not trusting her ability to speak.

Bane couldn’t keep relief from filling his face before he dropped his lips to hers and kissed her until she was breathless. 

He knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands from stripping her clothes free if he didn’t move away from her.

Bane lessened his hold and pressed his lips to the crown of her head, trying to get his breathing under control. 

Helena turned her head and rested her face against his broad chest, hearing his heart pounding under his dense musculature. 

“Would you like to help?” she finally murmured.

“I’d rather sit and watch you instead,” he stated as he ran his hands up and down her back. 

Helena paused and fought a blush that kept itself contained to the apples of her cheeks. 

“Could you at least open the wine and shell the walnuts if you’re going to sit?”

He chuckled, the sound vibrating through his chest and filling her ear. 

Bane eventually forced himself to move away from her and grab the twist-tied bag of walnuts and shell huller before resuming his place at the kitchen table. 

Helena bustled around for a few pans and skillets as he worked through each shell. 

“What’s on the menu?” he asked as she wiped off a marble cutting block. 

“I’m going to have a king crab leg appetizer and some melon wrapped proscuitto. My uncle is allergic to tomatoes so I’m making clam chowder and to kind of   
complete the theme, some halibut with rice pilaf and an apricot, plum chutney.”

Bane continued with the shelling before he spoke. “That sounds like a dinner to look forward to, I feel privileged to be able to share your company.”

Helena smiled to herself and returned her attention to coarsely chopping a pile of dried plums and Turkish apricots. 

“What’s for dessert?” he asked as he walked to the counter and plucked a bottle of pricey red wine off the counter and twisted the corkscrew into the crumbly cork. 

Helena scooped up the dried fruit and dumped them in a small saucepan to begin simmering and reducing in a sugar and lemon juice bath. 

“I baked some shortbread shells yesterday and am going to make a Bavarian cream custard with fresh berries and mint.”

Bane smiled and leveled his gaze at her as his face held an unreadable expression. He stared until she squirmed under his wordless stare. 

“I’m going to change and get ready for dinner after I finish the appetizers,” she murmured nervously.

“Do you need to run your clothes through the laundry before dinner? I have some shirts and slacks that I bought for dad in the wrong size, would you like to see if they’ll fit and then I can clean those?” she asked as she gestured at him with her silicone spoon, dripping sticky sweetness on the stovetop. 

Bane looked down at his shirt and jacket. “Yes, a run through the laundry would good.”

Helena let go of the bunch of mint she was chopping as he walked around to stand behind her and pin her to the countertop with his formidable bulk.

“A shower too,” he said on a ragged whisper as he brushed her hair away from the curve of her neck and pressed his lips to her flushed skin and demanded on a strangled groan as he tugged her away from the countertop. “Turn off the stove.”

“I have so much I have to do,” Helena stammered as he tugged more insistently. 

“I’m afraid I have to insist,” he growled as he yanked her back into his arms and crushed her against his chest. 

As Bane reached past Helena and shut off the stove burners before pulling her towards the living room and the closest soft surface, still thinking somewhat of her comfort before his reptilian brain took over, Talia, Ryan and Chris all succumbed to the heavy tranquilizer that Barsad had roofied them with. 

Barsad took a slow sip from his flask before scrolling through the television guide and finding a playoff game before sending a message to Bane on the cheap burner phone.

He tapped out in shorthand that essentially the trio was subdued for now and he would await further instructions. Barsad had booked the room for three nights to start, plenty of time to adjust and cleanup if necessary.

As Barsad zip-tied the drugged trio’s hands, ankles and duct-taped their mouths, back in the Lang household, Bane practically shoved Helena belly down to the smooth surface of the suede ottoman. 

“Don’t turn around,” he groaned when she started to shift onto her elbows and rise.

“I’m,” Helena started to say before a growl emerged from his broad chest and silenced her. 

She froze when he closed his arms around her and pulled her back against his hard, formidable frame. 

“Wait,” she murmured as he smoothed a hand down the front of her pants. 

“Shhh,” he soothed.

Bane slid his fingers under the thin silken layer of her panties and found her bare, intimate flesh. He teased her feminine folds until they were wet and slid his fingertips along her soaked slit until his cock threatened to bust through his worn pants.

She shook her head as he moved his index finger in methodical circles around her clit until she could barely breathe underneath him.

Helena heard him fumble at his zipper and soft moans as he stroked his cock once it was free of the confines of his too tight pants.

Bane grunted and shifted above her, forcing the breath from her lungs as he yanked down her pants and thin panties. 

“This won’t take long,” he growled and licked a wet line up the length of her back as he plunged his cock into her without letting her offer much in the way of resistance. 

She cried out in time with each of his rough thrusts. Bane molded himself against her and moaned as their intimate flesh wetly kissed.

He knew he wouldn’t last much longer and slipped his fingertips to return to her clit before he climaxed.

Bane felt himself hypnotized by the sound of Helena’s ragged breathing and the feeling of her sweaty skin under his palms. His orgasm washed over him as his knees grew weak and he let his cock stay firmly inside her until it softened and slid out on its own. 

He let his forehead rest against the back of her shoulder as he caught his breath.

Helena sagged under him after her body clenched under him as he pushed her into an orgasmic abyss. She froze when the words he murmured against her shoulder blade reached her ears.

“I love you,” he felt slip out of his lips and felt uncertainty slow the very movement of red blood cells in his veins.


	10. Real versus Imaginary

Bane froze the millisecond the words left his lips as he dropped his face to the warm curve of Helena’s neck. 

He listened to her breathing return to normal as he struggled with whether to speak or remain a sudden mute. 

Helena shifted under his formidable body, their intimacy created a spark in them both as she shifted, and their skin kissed.

Bane opened his mouth to speak but Helena pressed her fingertips to his lips and stopped any words he might say. She shook her head, “don’t say that to me,” she murmured.

“Why not?” he asked as he closed his large hand around her wrist and yanked her hand away from his mouth.

“You can’t mean something like that, can’t feel that;” she stammered before he abruptly cut off her words by crushing his lips to hers.

“Why can’t I?” he pressed and cupped her jaw with his free hand, his eyes desperately searching hers. 

“You don’t know me at all,” Helena started and tried to squirm out from under him. 

“Stop,” Bane demanded softly as he captured her wrists and tried to keep her still without hurting her. 

Helena knew it was futile to continue fighting and sagged underneath him. He let go of her wrists and shifted enough of his weight so she could breathe easier. 

“I want to get to know you, all of you,” he murmured as he brushed her hair off her forehead. 

As Helena let his words wash over her, hours away Talia and her cohorts continued to stay captive in the opiate hold. Barsad found himself getting bored as he scrolled through the tv’s channels. 

He kept glancing at the drugged trio, he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just kill them. Walk up, one shot to the head each. 

Done, done, done.

Barsad blew out a sharp breath and kind of watched some fuzzy screened porn.

Hours away back at the Lang household, Helena raised her hand and pressed her palm over his heart that thudded in his broad chest.

“Will you let me get to know you?” he asked in her continued silence. 

Helena nodded as strongly as she could before she cleared her throat. “Can I go get ready? Please?”

Bane pulled her hand from his chest and kissed the center of her palm as he nodded.

Helena tugged her clothes back into place before standing. “Would you mind listening for the door in case I’m not downstairs when they arrive?” she asked as she smoothed her shirt down.

“Of course,” Bane said and restrained himself from following her up the stairs after she told him where he could find the laundry room and extra clothes with the plastic tags still attached. 

Some time passed as they both collectively cleaned up and changed their clothes. 

Helena was still upstairs when the doorbell rang.

Bane made his way to the tiled foyer and pulled the door open and saw a couple who must be Keith and Bev. 

Keith took a double take when he saw Bane’s massive frame fill the doorway but quickly smiled and extended his hand. “Good evening, Keith Michelson, this is my fiancé Bev Russo.” 

Bane observed that Keith was tall and athletic looking, dark blonde hair streaked with a few strands of grey and dazzling blue eyes. Bane shook Keith’s hand and then Bev’s, who was wearing a midnight blue gown with a low-cut bodice that showcased her ample chest and tiny waist. 

“Hello, I’m….,” Bane started before Bev cut him off with an enthusiastic albeit shrill squeal.

“You’re Nico! I can’t believe we’re actually meeting; Keith was certain Helena had made you up to avoid his blind date set-ups,” she continued and pulled him into a hug. 

Bane pulled his lips into a smile as he returned Bev’s warm embrace. “Yes, it’s great to finally meet you, Helena speaks so highly of you two.”

Keith and Bane shook hands, both men keeping their grips firm and assertive but restrained. 

Bane stepped aside so that Bev and Keith could come in. Bane led Keith and Bev to the kitchen where Helena had set out an assortment of wine glasses and champagne flutes.

As Bane poured several glasses of a light, crisp chardonnay, upstairs, Helena zipped up the dress and adjusted the thin straps to lay flat against her shoulders.

Helena looked at herself in the mirror facing to the front and then turned to see her profile. She took a deep breath and smoothed her hands down the length of her gown and stood up straighter in her ridiculously tall high heels. Helena leaned close one last time to make sure there was nothing in her teeth and dabbed a little peach gloss across her lips. 

She turned off the light in the bathroom and shut her bedroom door behind her as walked towards the stairs. Helena heard Keith, Bev and Bane laughing as she descended the stairs and walked into the kitchen. 

The click of her heels on the slate tiles caught Bane’s attention as he turned to look at her. 

He felt his heart jump in his chest as Helena walked into the kitchen in the shimmery blue gown. 

It was cut tastefully at the bodice but left the creamy skin of her décolletage exposed. Bane trailed his eyes from the top of the gown that was lightly molded to her breasts and down to where it smoothed over her slim waist and wrapped itself around her hips. 

The gown skimmed over her thighs and fell to a couple inches above her knees. Bane trailed his eyes further down her slender calves and feet that were encased in shoes with sparkling beads across the straps. The heels raised her height by almost four inches, and she moved effortlessly as she entered into the kitchen. 

The overhead lights made her gown seem to glow and reflected on the small diamond earrings she was wearing. Her hair was back loosely with a few long curls that came to rest on her shoulders. 

Keith saw Bane’s sudden interest towards the door. He followed Bane’s line of sight and saw Helena. 

Keith smiled and held out his arms to Helena as she walked towards him, the light bouncing off the fabric of her gown as she allowed herself to be hugged by Keith’s crushing embrace. 

“Helena, I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but you get more beautiful every time I see you.” Keith squeezed Helena in a hug and as she turned her head to the side to rest it on Keith’s chest she caught sight of Bane looking at her and Keith. 

Bane was gripping his glass so hard, it threatened to shatter in his grasp. Helena saw his eyes burning with internal rage and hellfire, he set his glass down and tried to avert his gaze. 

Helena locked eyes with him and continued to watch him as Keith released her and asked her about school and how she was progressing on her road to a Ph D. 

Helena saw Bane’s eyes lose a degree of their maniacal glow when Keith released her.

Bev gave Helena a hug as she snuggled close to Keith’s side.

“It is so great to see you two, I hope your wedding is beautiful,” Helena started. 

Bev and Keith were having a private ceremony at the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. Part of their wedding package included one ride each on the roller coasters on the top of the building. Helena didn’t realize it was possible to have a strictly speaking, private wedding in Las Vegas. 

Bev beamed at Helena and Keith. 

Helena knew she would be a beautiful bride. 

“As far as school,” Helena started, “I’m currently studying for the boards, I think I’m pretty close to being done. I’m also still teaching at the University,” Helena said. 

Bane listened intently as Helena talked about her life, he was learning about her through others. 

Keith put an arm around Bev and pulled her close, he kissed her forehead and turned back to Helena. “So school is going well, and it sounds like next time I see you I will be calling you doctor. So how is the love life of the young and beautiful? When am I going to go to your wedding? You’ve been to two of mine.” Keith said in an easy tone. 

Bane reached for a champagne glass and slowly filled it as he saw Helena stumble over what to say. 

“Well,” she said slowly, “I don’t really have a lot of free time right now. I’m really involved at the University and I still have to get the next semester outlined and submit it for approval. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for those kind of decisions,” Helena said looking quickly over at Bane. 

Keith smiled, “but it has to be on your mind, you’re positively glowing. Don’t you think Bev?” he continued to tease. 

Helena was at a total loss of words and then she felt a hand on the small of her back and found Bane next to her, holding the glass of champagne out to her. Helena smiled up at Bane and took a quick sip off the glass. 

Keith and Bev smiled at Bane as he watched Helena sip her champagne. Helena went to the counter and brought the bottle of blue label whiskey over to Keith and presented it to him as she wished him and Bev more wedding wishes. 

Helena felt Bane’s hand come to rest again on her lower back. He slowly traced his fingertips along the exposed skin of her back. 

“So,” Keith said, “how did you two meet?”

Bane drained his glass. “I work in the science department at the University, I met Helena one day by chance at the campus café,” he said never taking his hand off Helena’s back before pointing at Keith’s nearly empty glass. “Can I get you a refill?” 

“Sure,” Keith said passing his glass. “I’ll take something stronger.”

Bane left with the glass and also refilled his own. He fought himself on his want to be next to Helena, he had to fight to physically remove his hand from her back and move away from her. 

Bane still couldn’t fully understand how she could cause him to compromise himself. In his whole lifetime, he had never compromised himself or felt remorse.

He was always in control, the feeling of losing control was foreign to him, he couldn’t strategize because he didn’t know the rules. Bane poured himself another generous shot and quickly downed it, the alcohol burning its way down his throat. 

As he walked back to Helena, he noticed that she seemed more alluring as she lightly held onto her champagne flute. Bane suddenly wondered what she was thinking about.

“Would everyone like to make their way to the table?” Helena asked. 

Keith and Bev sat next to each other as Bane sat at the head of the table.

Keith showed off his new Submariner watch to Bane as Helena plated the appetizers. She brought over a tray of juicy cantaloupe that was wrapped in proscuitto and also set a small plate in front of everyone and walked back to the kitchen to soon fill those empty plates. Helena brought back a large platter and a pair of stainless-  
steel tongs. She laid a very long King Crab leg that she had slightly warmed onto each plate. 

Helena set out a variety of accoutrements which included a homemade tartar sauce, fresh chopped chives, butter, and a bottle of red cocktail sauce sure to offend the culinary gods. Keith was the first to laugh at the King Crab leg which surpassed the width of the small plate immensely. 

While everyone was picking at their crab, Helena spread out soup bowls and put on a low flame to bring the temperature up on the soup. Bev got up and started helping Helena pass the bowls. 

Helena had poured a full ladle of soup into each bowl and topped each one with a spoonful of crème fraiche and toasted pine nuts. Helena took a seat at the other end of the table and for a few minutes everyone was quiet as they ate. 

“So, “ Keith said conversationally, “you say you met Helena at the university and that you work in the sociology department?” 

Bane set down his spoon. “I did meet Helena at the university, more specifically in the coffee shop on campus and I work in the chemistry department not sociology.”

“Oohh, tell me about this coffee house meeting,” Bev said excitedly and set her napkin in her lap. 

Bane felt the weight of Helena’s eyes as he decided which way to spin the story. Helena had not said anything about their meeting, and he could custom build their history right now. Bane decided to tell Bev and Keith what he wished had been their initial meeting and past, he was going to fantasize.

“I stop at the campus coffee house every morning before I go to my office,” Bane started, and Helena pressed her lips together as he continued. 

“I was waiting for my usual when I saw Helena walk through the doors. I watched her order an extra hot vanilla latte. She walked near me at the other end of the counter to wait for the barista to make her drink,” Bane said as he moved his empty bowl to the corner of his placemat and continued with the coffee shop chance meeting as Helena listened raptly to him talk about their nonexistent past. 

“I looked over at her and saw her name badge that listed her in the Psychology department. I leaned over to her and asked her to quickly word associate with the word coffee.”

Bane paused and noticed all the empty glasses. “Refills?” he asked as he stood and collected Bev’s and Keith’s glasses. 

“Bev do you want a lemontini?” Helena asked as she stood and followed Bane to the kitchen.

“That’d be divine,” Bev called to her back.

In the kitchen, Bane slowly uncapped the bottle of whiskey as he watched Helena prepare a lemontini for her and Bev. After he filled the glasses he stepped close to Helena and whispered into her ear.

Helena shivered as his breath was warm as he spoke each syllable. “Do you have anything you want to incorporate on our chance meeting, or do you trust me to paint the entire picture?” Bane asked and ran his fingertips down Helena’s spine. 

She closed her eyes, her hands still on the counter as she whispered back. “I want you to add some truth to the story.”

Bane never moved his hand but paused at her request for truth. 

“What did you have in mind?” he asked continuing to stroke her back. 

“Tell me something about yourself that is true?,” Helena said. 

Bane picked up the glasses and walked back to the table as Helena sliced fresh lemons for the cocktails. 

Bane passed Keith his glass and continued with the coffee shop scene. 

“She looked at me and said ‘god’. I asked her what her answer would equate to on the Wechsler Bellevue scale for measuring word associations.” 

Bev interrupted Bane then, “what did you say?” she called to Helena as she walked towards the table with Bev’s lemontini garnished with a fresh lemon peel. 

Helena smiled before answering Bev, “I asked him if he was a new professor of psychology, I hadn’t seen him in the department,” Helena said and walked back to check the fish baking in the oven.

Bane continued their coffee house introduction as Helena pulled square dinner plates out of the wood cabinets. 

“I told her that I was actually a professor in the chemistry department but was very intrigued with a certain woman that I had not even been formally introduced to who worked in the psychology department.” 

Bev giggled as she sipped her lemontini, “that is bold, what did she say? I guess she didn’t throw her coffee at you?” Bev asked earnestly, anxiously awaiting Bane to answer. 

“No,” Bane continued, “her latte wasn’t ready yet, so she was unarmed. Just so she wouldn’t think I was psychotic I immediately apologized. I told her that sometimes when you work in the lab too much with microscopes you struggle when talking to a beautiful woman.” 

Bev clapped her hands in delight and was hanging on Bane’s every word as he continued. “Her coffee was ready by then and I thought that my chance was over and was prepared to watch her leave. Instead she smiled and asked what my title was in the science department. I held out my hand then and introduced myself,” Bane said, picturing the fictional introduction.

“I told her I was the new chair for the chemistry department, and she said how she was working part time in the classroom and the rest of the time was devoted to her master’s thesis composition. I told her that I had transferred from New York to replace the former chair member.”

Bane paused and took a sip of the strong alcohol, knowing that Helena was paying close attention to each word he uttered. Helena listened to Bane talk about their imaginary meeting in this coffee shop.

Helena turned her attention back to the empty plates and put a spoonful of rice pilaf in the middle of each plate and laid the fish filet on top of the mound of rice. As Helena poured the apricot and plum chutney in a small round dish for each plate, she listened intently as Bane continued with their fictional first conversation.

“I then asked her if she ate food.” Bane said as Helena walked over with the plates. The fish perfectly cooked and splayed over the hearty grains of rice.

Bev stared at Bane, “what happened next?” she asked as she picked up her fork and slowly delved into the entrée as Bane continued. 

“I told her that I also ate food and that the next night at seven, I was going to be in my perpetually reserved corner booth at Daphne’s and maybe she could just also happen to be there at the same time and we could eat together,” Bane said a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips at he looked down the table at Helena as   
she filled her fork with the rice. 

Keith lifted his glass and regarded Bane over the rim of his glass. “So, a PhD in Chemistry then?” he asked. 

Bane took a bite of the flaked fish and nodded back at Keith. “What was your dissertation?” Keith asked. 

Helena’s hand which was holding her fork froze as she thought that the rouse was up. Bane glanced briefly at Helena before directing his answer at Keith. 

“The study of the formation of a tropane ring in regard to the specific alkaloids in several varying plant species,” Bane said to Keith. Helena let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as Bane further explained what he just said to the non-scientific community. 

“Tropane is a nitrogenous organic compound, and I studied the formation of alkaloids in both atropine, cocaine and other roots,” Bane said scooping up some rice soaked with the sweet chutney. 

“That sounds so interesting,” Bev said. “Did you get to travel for your research?” she asked pushing her plate away. Bane nodded, “yes I traveled to Europe and studied nightshade growing in Scotland. I traveled to the Eastern Slopes of the Andes to analyze the cellular structure of the Coca plant and I have been all over the United States in search of geographically specific mandrake roots.” 

Keith leveled his gaze at Bane. “Well, that sounds absolutely complicated. I much prefer to push paper, as long as it is in reference to earned revenue,” Keith said. 

Helena started clearing plates and added, “I of course was fascinated with his theories in regards to Mandrake roots because DH Lawrence referred to the Mandrake as the weed of ill omen and it makes sense when you read Nico’s analysis of how Lawrence might have settled on that descriptor,” she added as Bev carried hers and Keith’s plate to the kitchen and stacked them beside the sink. 

Keith drained his glass and slapped the top of the table. “I could go for a cigar outside; would you like to join me?” Keith asked before he kissed the top of Bev’s hand and walked outside with Bane.

Bev waved at them before Bane closed the sliding glass doors, “take your time. I have to cross-examine Helena on all the dirty details,” she laughed as she toasted her martini glass at him. Bane cast a backwards glance at Helena as he joined Keith and took the pricey Cohiba that Keith offered him.

The two men stood on the deck and inhaled the rich, potent smoke as the rising full moon rose in the sky and watched them from above. Bane watched Helena and Linda as they sat at the table inside the house, their giggling reached his ears as well as Keith’s. 

“God only knows what the two of them are talking about,” Keith said looking over at Bane trying to read him. Bane casually held the Cohiba as he looked out over the backyard that Helena had tirelessly tried to turn into a floral showcase. The redwood deck led down to a lush manicured lawn which was fringed with tree roses that were all blooming in varying shades of red, pink, white and purple. There were lots of woodland critter statuary deliberately placed around the base of the rose bushes and Bane also saw a redwood patio table and chair set to the other side of the deck and a well-used stainless-steel barbeque. 

Bev followed Helena into the kitchen so she could top off their martini glasses. “So, tell me,” Linda asked leaning against the counter, “does he fuck as good as he looks?” she asked slyly. Helena quickly took a long drink from her glass as her mind raced for an answer that would placate Linda. She was saved from an immediate response as Linda continued.

“I mean I wish I had a professor that looked like that when I was in college,” Bev said dreamily. Helena looked out at Bane where he was talking with Keith.

“Let’s just say he fulfills my needs on every level,” Helena said as she raised her glass to her lips, a small smile forming as she looked over at Bev.

“I’ll drink to that,” Bev stated draining her glass and continuing to lean on the counter as Helena assembled the custard fruit tarts for dessert. 

While Helena arranged slices of kiwi fruit on the tarts, Bev continued with a litany of explicit conversations in regard to Bane’s performance in bed. 

“Do you guys want to come in and have dessert?” Helena called out the window. The two men came back in and sat back down at the dining room table where Helena had already placed the dessert course on their place settings. The shortbread tart held the Bavarian cream and was additionally decorated with small wedges of mandarin oranges and sliced strawberries. Helena pierced the shortbread tart with her fork and loaded the tines with custard and a slice of strawberry.

Bane caught Bev sending him a smile that he couldn’t quite interpret, she then looked over at Helena and winked. 

Helena wouldn’t meet Bane’s eyes after Bev drew attention to herself and quickly asked Keith about any promising business acquisitions he was looking into. Keith set down his fork, he was not a big dessert fan and looked towards Helena. 

“Well, there are a few companies that I’m investing in on the east coast, I haven’t seen a big return on investment though,” he said and then added, “but it is still a little early to tell.” 

Keith was a high-functioning alcoholic but sometimes the booze took over and became overly aggressive. 

Bev laid a hand on Keith’s forearm when she sensed his growing drunken agitation. 

“I am so relieved to see you’re real,” Keith said and chuckled as he nearly spilled his glass and continued.

“I have brought many a single prospects here for our lovely dinner hostess and she has snubbed them all for various reasons. The last guy I brought over was a new CPA to the firm, he owned his own home and was a good-looking kid. Do you know what Helena said about him after dinner? I will give you one guess,” Keith said to Bane. 

“Keith please let’s not pick on Helena about her dating preferences after she has just prepared this wonderful meal for us,” Bev pleaded. 

Keith glanced over at Helena briefly before turning his attention back to Bane.

“Alright, it’s getting about time for us to go. But first I want you to guess the reason she gave for rejecting the last guy,” Keith said to Bane with all traces of a smile gone. 

Bane narrowed his eyes before answering. “I wouldn’t know what to guess having never met your successful and attractive CPA,” Bane said tonelessly, his words hanging in the air. Keith smiled and settled back in the high-backed chair. “Do you remember what you said about Michael?” Keith said to Helena. 

When Helena didn’t answer, Keith answered for her. “Helena told me that she couldn’t date him because he was involved in the financial world and she didn’t   
associate long term happiness with people who worked with money.” 

Keith laughed, “I mean the financial world has given her everything she has, this house, educational opportunities. I asked her to name a single bad thing with being married to a man from the financial district and she didn’t have anything to say.”

Bane felt his anger surge when he saw Helena’s discomfort and her near-tears state. 

Keith drained Bev’s glass before tapping the table in front of him. “Are you going to marry my niece or just keep fucking her?”

Bev quickly stood and tugged on Keith’s upper arm. “Come on baby, you’ve had a bit too much to drink. You have an early conference call with the board of directors.”

Keith looked over at Bev, “you’re right,” he said. “I have to go over my presentation.” he said. “I’m sorry Helena, I don’t mean to pick on you, I just don’t want you to   
grow old by yourself that’s all and I have had too much to drink.” Keith said to Helena. 

Bane watched Helena acknowledge Keith’s apology and then Keith turned to him and shook his hand offering another casual apology. 

Helena walked Keith and Bev to the door. Bane followed and waited till they wished her good night and complimented her on a wonderful meal. Keith tripped and almost fell as Bev led him to their car in the driveway. 

Helena closed the front door and locked the dead bolt. “Well,” she said leaning against the closed door, “I think that went well. What do you think?” she asked her words heavy with sarcasm. Her feet were hurting from the fashionable heels. She had bought them at a deep discount, but they were half a size too small and she was really noticing the size difference now. 

Bane walked over to where Helena was leaning against the door and put his hands on the door on either side of her. Helena regretted having that last drink as she looked up at Bane, in her heels she didn’t have to look up quite so high. 

“I think dinner was amazing, but it paled in comparison to how exquisite you look in this dress,” Bane said as he leaned into Helena. “Was there any truth to what you said during dinner?” Helena asked as his lips hovered over hers. 

She continued speaking, “was there any truth woven into your story or was it all fictional?” she pressed. 

“I have hiked along the Eastern Slopes of the Andes,” he said and teased his fingertips under the thin straps of her gown. 

“How did you come to end up in the Andes?” 

“There was an employment opportunity,” he said vaguely. 

Bane knew that Helena wanted to keep pressing him for information and was thankful when he felt his cheap burner phone buzz in his pocket. 

“Why don’t you go run a bath and I’ll bring us some spiked coffees,” he murmured as the phone buzzed a second time. 

Helena shook her head. “I’m going to clean up the dishes first,” she murmured.

Bane stepped aside and let her walk to the kitchen as he lingered by the door and answered Barsad’s call at the start of the fourth ring. 

He listened as Barsad reported that Talia and the two militants were still passed out. 

Bane further frustrated Barsad when he told him to continue leading Talia on a wild goose chase until he gave him the okay to return.

Bane ended the call and walked back to the kitchen where Helena was pouring soap into the dishwasher and pushing the start button. She wiped down the counter and dried her hands. 

Helena checked the locks on the doors and windows as Bane wordlessly watched her and then followed her up the stairs. 

She proceeded directly to her room and kicked off her shoes, giving a sigh of relief before she turned to him.

“So, all of that talk about tripane and whatever formation you said, where did you come up with that?”

“Tropane ring formation,” he said as he began to unbutton his shirt. He unzipped his slacks as he added, “mandrake roots can grow in near-darkness,” he murmured. 

Helena watched a peculiar expression wash over his features. She thought she could see pain, past sorrow and suffering before he buried the emotions from her sight. 

Bane didn’t like the idea of what Helena might’ve seen in his features in that vulnerable moment and rubbed at the back of his neck. 

“Come here,” she murmured, and he looked over as she patted the top of the bed. “Lay down and I’ll rub your back,” Helena added as Bane restrained his movements and casually closed the distance between them.

Helena let her eyes move over his nearly naked body as he stretched out on top of the duvet cover. 

He heard her fumble with the stubborn cap on a bottle of lotion on top of the bedside table before she began to move her hands in circular motions over the bare skin of his back and upper shoulders. 

“In your version of how we met, do we go to dinner together the next night?” Helena asked as she pushed the heels of her palms deep into his muscular flesh. 

“Yes, you agreed to meet me at Daphne’s the following night,” Bane murmured. 

“Tell me about our first date,” Helena said dancing her fingertips down the length of his spine.

“I asked you to dinner at seven. I said I would pick you up, but you insisted on meeting me there and you arrived ten minutes early. I was already there,” Bane said and added with an all-male tone. “You had on a well-fitted violet silk blouse and black skirt with uncomfortable looking shoes like you were wearing tonight.”

“What happened next?” Helena asked, genuinely wanting to hear Bane’s version of their fictional first date. 

“We ordered a couple of cocktails and I made a few menu recommendations. You ended up ordering the chicken picata and I had my usual pesto gnocchi, we also each had Daphne’s famous Caesar salad with their fresh baked baguette,” Bane said as he rolled over and pulled her onto him until she was straddling him. Her supple thighs falling to either side of his hips.

Helena gasped as Bane pushed her dress up past her hips as he continued telling her about their Italian dinner date. 

She temporarily pushed aside the knowledge that not only was Daphne’s a real restaurant nearby, but she really liked the baguettes that they served. “During dinner I told you about my theory of reaching the students who absolutely abhor chemistry and being able to measure success by really getting through to some of the kids that cycle through the semesters. I asked you about your thesis research and then we discussed topics of a more personal nature,” he growled as he tugged at her miniscule silken panties, anxious to feel her delicate intimacy. 

“What kind of topics?” Helena gasped as he licked the rough pad of his thumb before moving it in slow circles on her clit. 

“We talked about our goals for our futures. I asked you what you were looking for in a man,” Bane said further piquing her interest as he increased the movement on her sensitive nub of pink flesh. 

Helena wanted to buck her hips against him as her breath came harder. “What did I say I was looking for?”


	11. A Tough Q&A

As Bane answered, he fumbled with his zipper and took longer than he’d like to free his painfully hard cock, he didn’t want to stop touching her. He watched Helena’s face, gauging her reaction to his idea of what her date night response might be. 

“You said you were looking for an intelligent man who had a sense of humor. You said a good job and living conditions were a must. I pressed you though on what you wanted from a man besides them being employed and financially solvent. I asked you what really mattered to you most of all?” 

Bane made Helena utter incoherently as he moved his hands to her hips and shifted her until he could impale her on his hard cock. “What did I say was paramount?” she moaned as he urged her to rock her hips and make him fill her from different angles.

“You said more than anything you wanted a man that would never hurt you or make you cry, you said you wanted a man that would keep you safe,” Bane groaned as he sat up further and forced a cry from her at the sudden shift in their intimate flesh kissing.

“What did you say to that?” Helena whispered as she dropped her hands to grip the tops of his muscular shoulders. 

“It isn’t important what I said, but what I did,” he growled cryptically as he felt himself nearing his orgasmic precipice.

“What did you do?” she barely managed as he tightened his fingers into the smooth flesh of her hips and made her bounce with more enthusiasm until each plunge became close to painful as he violently filled her.

Bane yanked her down until he completely filled her, their intimate skin touched as he crushed his mouth to hers. Helena cried out into his mouth as he returned his thumb to making frantic circles on her swollen, sensitive clit.

Helena felt herself surrender under his kiss, which prompted Bane to pull her closer. He broke the kiss as the heat of her body and passion in the reciprocity of her kiss was near-overwhelming and made his orgasm wash over him. He shuddered as he filled her hotly and stickily. 

Bane kissed a path down her neck as he coaxed Helena’s body to coil and clench around him where he remained firmly sheathed inside her wet center. He groaned as her tight wetness clenched around his cock.

Helena sighed raggedly, reveling in the feeling of his lips moving down her neck in a hot path as her breathing was slow to return to normal. Bane could feel her pulse pounding under his lips, her heart pumping blood through her body fast, leaving her flushed in his arms. 

Bane reveled in the knowledge that the rapid rise and fall of her chest was because of his penetrating touch. 

He groaned when his cock softened to the point that it wetly slid out of her.

Helena shifted in his lap as he tightened his grip around her. “I’ll never hurt you,” he murmured as he pressed his lips to the center of her sternum. 

She folded her arms around him and rested the side of her face against the top of his head. 

“How did our date end?” she murmured as he danced his fingertips up and down the length of her spine. 

“Where did I leave off?” he asked casually and smoothed his hands down to squeeze her thighs until oval bruises would be visible and vividly purple within four hours. 

“You said we had dinner and talked shop as well as shared our dreams and goals.”

“Anything else?” he murmured as he fought a growl that his cock wasn’t remaining hard with his still surging lust. 

“Well,” she said slowly, “you might’ve asked me what I was seeking in a prospective man. Then you might have kissed me.”

“Then what?” Bane asked as he leaned back and looked up at her. 

“I don’t know, you didn’t get to that,” she said returning his assessing gaze. 

“What do you think happened next?” he pressed. “Tell me how you think the evening ended,” he practically begged. 

Helena was quiet for a while as she considered his words and shifted, giving a delicious hiss as a jolt shot through her femininity when their intimate flesh brushed against each other. 

“It’s not important what happened in the fabricated past. What’s important is what’s happening now,” she said slowly.

The emphasis on the word important was not missed by Bane as she further elaborated. “I want to look at what’s happening now, I want to start by sorting fact from fiction.”

“Where do you propose we start?” he asked genuinely intrigued with her statement but also hesitant to agree to whatever she had in mind, being raw and vulnerable was unfamiliar territory to him.

“You’re completely blinding,” Bane thought as he slid his hands up the smooth skin of her sides and danced his fingertips around her pink nipples until they grew hard enough to cut glass. He cupped his hands around the warm flesh of her breasts and squeezed rhythmically as she struggled to speak under the distraction his touch created. 

Helena covered a smile and chuckle as she looked away from him. Bane caught her wrist and pulled her hand away from her mouth. “Don’t hide from me.”

She cleared her throat before she spoke. “How did you know about Daphne’s?”

He smiled lazily up at her. “We passed it on the way in from the city,” he murmured and dropped his strong hands to her hips. 

As Bane continued to stare up at her, hours away in the rundown hotel room, Talia began to stir from her drugged cup of coffee which had quite the opposite of a caffeine pick-me-up.

Barsad looked up from the tv screen of fuzzy porn as Talia gave a series of groans before she opened her eyes and nearly fell off the bed as she sat up too fast and got light-headed.

She squinted around the room and tried to focus on Barsad.

“What is, where….?” Talia stammered before Barsad switched off the tv before he spoke. 

“There’s been a change of plans,” Barsad started easily and watched Talia try to process his words as Chris and Ryan remained oblivious to the conscious world. 

“A change? What are you talking about and where are we?”

Barsad shocked Talia when he closed the distance between them in two long strides and slapped her beautiful face. His open palm smacked loudly on the smooth skin over her sculpted cheekbones. The force made the inside of her cheek kiss her molars and cut the tender flesh and the metallic taste of blood filled her mouth in the wake of his stinging contact. 

A startled cry fell from Talia’s utterly shocked, full lips and she raised a hand to cup the burning side of her face. “Just what…?” she started and soon fell silent and cowered when Barsad raised his hand again.

“Shut your mouth, it’s now your turn to listen.”

“You can’t talk to me like this, my father is Ras Al Ghul and I am,” Talia shouted, her voice growing strong until Barsad eviscerated her capacity for words when he soon had a titanium short-barreled .45 pointed in the center of her forehead. 

“Your father was a warrior and a man,” Barsad said and added dryly. “You are a disappointment as a daughter and woman. You use your cunt as currency and possess only the smallest sliver of the honor and strength your father possessed.”

“My father was a fucking God!” Talia screeched. “You are being paid to kill that whore.”

“She has done nothing to you Talia, you are angry that your father proved to be a man. He descended the mountaintop for her mother.”

“Her whore mother seduced my father,” Talia screeched before Barsad’s blatant chuckling paused her words and she stared at him with wide eyes. “What is this?!?” she sputtered. “You are not demonstrating honor, you are a fool, seduced by that useless slit,” she hissed.

Barsad’s laughter stopped and he held Talia’s eyes as he spoke. “I secured a bigger paycheck; your words mean nothing.”

Talia began to laugh at him. “Now who’s buying into that cunt?” she chuckled and shook her head. 

Barsad’s ears rang painfully at the sound of her shrill laughter. 

Talia screamed and fell into a rigid, petrified silence when two gunshots rang out next to her, closely followed by a third. 

She was frightened to such stiffness that she had a hard time turning her head. She saw enough when a sidelong glance revealed Ryan’s grey matter shining dully under the yellow lights. Talia held her breath as she listened to Chris’s ragged breathing slow until he just stopped living. 

“Talia.”

She looked up into Barsad’s bright, blue unblinking eyes. 

He remained quiet for a few moments, wordlessly holding her paralyzed under the weight of his gaze.

“Do you wish to remain living?”

Talia nodded, not trusting her voice. 

“Then I demand silence and obedience.”

Talia bobbed her head, her bladder tightening as fear settled deep inside her. 

As Talia fought a wave of nausea, hours away in Helena’s spacious bedroom, Bane didn’t want to let go of Helena when she tried to get up to wash her face and change into something much more comfortable.

He reluctantly let her climb off his nearly naked lap and watched her push her dress back down her thighs before she disappeared behind the bathroom door.   
Bane brushed a hand against his flaccid cock and knew that if he pushed open the door, he wouldn’t be able to get hard enough to fuck her. He zipped himself back up and slipped back on his tank-style undershirt before pulling out his burner phone and tapping out a request for an update from Barsad. 

He had no sooner put the phone away and resumed sitting on the edge of the bed before he heard the faint vibration indicating a new message. Bane finished unlacing and kicking off his shoes before reading Barsad’s quick reply. 

“The children became a problem and I put them down. She’s cooperating.”

Bane smirked and tapped out a message to keep things as status quo and to keep Talia confused, guessing and afraid. 

Helena emerged from the bathroom in a pair of capri style loose sweats and short-sleeved shirt with the album cover of a musical group that measured the length of their wall hardware. 

Helena’s eyes fell on him under the covers, sitting up straight against the headboard. The linen was pulled up to his lap and all she could see was his bare skin. She tugged at the hem of her shirt. “It gets cold at night and the heater doesn’t work well,” she said almost apologetically. 

Bane smiled slowly, his eyes full of naked lust as he pulled the covers back and wordlessly patted the bare space beside him. 

Helena settled next to him as he pulled the covers up and around her. She cleared her throat nervously. “I like to watch the news before bed, do you mind?” she asked reaching for the remote. 

Bane slid down further in the bed as he shook his head, “please watch what you’d like.”

Helena scrolled through the channels until she found her favorite anchor and skimmed the ticker tape with news from around the world. “Did you hear about the fires in……?” she started to ask him and stopped speaking when she found his eyes and face filled with something unreadable.

“Are you okay?” she asked before turning down the volume of the news program. 

He nodded, not realizing he’d been staring. She had caught him lost in thought. “Are you okay after your uncle towards the end of dinner?”

Helena rolled her eyes as she settled under the covers next to him. “That always happens when he’s drunk, he never remembers.”

Bane pulled the remote from her hand and switched off the tv. He grabbed her left hand after he tossed the plastic remote to land softly on the carpeted floor. 

“What would you say if I asked you to marry me?” Bane whispered as he pressed his lips to her naked ring finger.


	12. Legacy Ended

“Marry?” Helena said lamely as Bane nodded wordlessly in response as he tugged at her hips and roughly turned her over.

“Yes,” he murmured as he wound one hand in the silken fall of her hair and pushed her pants down her thighs with the other. 

“Will you marry me?” Bane groaned against the flushed skin on the side of her neck before spitting in his palm and stroking his rapidly hardening cock.

“Will you marry me?” he repeated on an uneven grunt as he teased the head of his cock against her tight rear entrance before he slid inside her with one smooth thrust. 

Helena cried out with a mix of emotions as he evened out his pace to fluid, deep plunges inside her. He stole her breath at the end of each thrust.

“Will you?” he wheezed and brought both hands to the supple flesh of her hips and squeezed until he forced a painful cry to slip from between her lips.

Helena couldn’t form coherent words with his enthusiastic pounding against her, their intimate flesh violently kissing. 

She gasped and nodded her head, beginning to find her breath when he slowed down his frantic pace. “Yes,” she managed on a dry cough as he yanked her hips further up and back against him, changing the angle of how he filled her to the intimate hilt.

Bane paused and stared down at her gasping while he completely filled her. Her rear tightness squeezed around his cock. “Yes?” he asked and gave a slow groan as he increased his pace, his climax dangerously close.

“Yes, yes,” she moaned and nodded her head.

Bane let his happiness fill his face, not afraid to look vulnerable with her not able to see his raw emotions. He leaned over her as he fucked her more urgently until a fine sheen of sweat sprouted on both their bodies. He collapsed over her as his cock spasmed and he filled her rear opening with hot sticky cum. 

As Bane caught his breath, hours away in the shitty hotel, Barsad ordered Talia to sit up straight and hold her hands out to her sides. 

Talia sneered at Barsad, “enjoy this,” she spit. “Your legacy will be short-lived.” 

Barsad chuckled as he settled back in the threadbare chair. “You really think highly of yourself don’t you?”

Talia wordlessly sniffed the air but unblinkingly held his eyes. 

“I’m a descendent from a line of men who no longer walk the earth,” she spit and sat up straighter as she added in a softer tone. “How much money to drive me back to kill that cunt and the defector?”

Barsad shook his head, “it’s not about money?”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing you can provide,” Barsad said flatly. 

“Try me,” Talia murmured.

“I want a new life, a new identity somewhere far away.”

“I can give you that, I own properties all over the world thanks to my near ownership of Bruce’s assets.”

“You’d feel you were somehow still in control of me,” Barsad said with an ugly sneer. 

Talia couldn’t even pretend to deny that she wouldn’t feel like she still had a hold on him, even remotely. 

“I could just give you cash, no strings, just cash, any denomination or currency type you want.”

Barsad remained silent as she stammered on, “what else do you want?”

“Someone to spend money and the rest of my new life with, that’s proving to be a much harder find,” he admitted wryly. 

“I can be anyone, fulfill everything you need,” Talia whispered and leaned back.

Barsad snickered and made Talia furious. “What is it? Are you wanting to spend this new life and identity with the masked defector who used to be my protector?”

It was Talia’s turn to laugh when darkness filled Barsad’s face at the insinuation. 

She boldly continued as she toyed with the top buttons of her blouse. “Are you unable to function with women and running away to be someone else, to try and live again?”

Barsad stood up. “Shut up,” he said as he pointed at her. 

“Tell me what it will take for you to drive me back, what do you want?” Talia purred as she continued unbuttoning her blouse. 

“Stop,” Barsad said.

Talia noticed the smallest hitch in his voice. She knew he was like every other man she had ever encountered. 

She slowly stood and slipped out of her clothes before she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled towards Barsad where he was a veritable stone pillar. 

Barsad didn’t have any words as Talia crawled towards him, unashamed in her glorious nudity. He didn’t have words as she fumbled urgently at his zippered pants closure and soon had his cock out. He managed a moan as the head of his cock was suddenly in her mouth, her wet tongue teasing his hardening shaft. 

If the room had been a little classier, there would’ve been mirrors on the ceiling and when Barsad tipped his head back as Talia swallowed the length of his cock, he would’ve seen the flash of the small curved blade in the webbing between her thumb and index finger.

Barsad’s moans of pleasure turned to strangled gasps as his hard cock spasmed in her mouth when she ran the blade down the crease of his inner thigh. The wickedly sharp blade cut through his strong femoral artery and the countdown was on for the very small amount of life he had left. 

Talia stood as Barsad dropped to his knees, his hands cupping his groin, futilely trying to stop his life from pouring out of him.

Talia wiped her mouth with the edge of a pillowcase before standing over Barsad and watched him die. His last conscious moments were of her unabashed naked body towering over him. 

“You’re all the same,” she spit down at Barsad’s now dead form.

Talia bustled around the room, took a leisurely shower in the cracked, mildewed shower stall, and went through the messages from her fallen protector to Barsad’s phone. She shook her head in disappointment and heavy regret that she was going to need to open him from stem to stern and truss him up.

Talia poached the dead for supplies before she headed back towards the Lang household to kill the cunt that was causing her carefully constructed plans to crumble and the man who once upheld her as a goddess. As she began the first of many miles, back at her final destination, Bane felt himself grow soft and slide out of Helena. He shoved a few of the round, decorative pillows onto the floor and couldn’t keep from roughly yanking her around to face him. 

Bane’s rough grip and fingertips tightening until bruises threatened to blossom, caused Helena to gasp. She was able to finally try catching her breath once his arms closed around her and pulled her close. 

Helena turned her head and rested her ear over his strong beating heart. Her body was electric and ached in more places than she could begin to differentiate. 

As Bane and Helena’s heart rates began to settle and they let their eyes fall closed, they had no idea that Talia was urging the large vehicle closer towards them, her knuckles white from where she gripped the steering wheel.


	13. To Break, Command and Devour

As Helena and Bane fell into a light doze, hours away Talia closed the distance between her and the Lang Household, the heavy tires devouring the miles as she smashed the accelerator to the floor. She checked the rearview mirror as a highway patrol officer passed her on the five-lane freeway. 

She pressed her lips together in a firm line and clenched her teeth until her jaw popped. If she didn’t need to keep her eyes open to drive, she would’ve squeezed them tightly shut to avoid the assault on the frontal memory of her brain as her mind replayed the first time she realized her hold over her Protector had waned. She could taste the bitter moment that her golden cunt, that she had always held just out of his reach no longer, held the luster it always had.

It had been the night she had thrown the wine glass at Helena across the table where it shattered. A few small shards of glass opened the smallest of cuts on Helena’s soft fingertips.

Talia had been just out of sight in the kitchen doorway when she witnessed the heart stopping moment of Bane dipping a cloth napkin in a glass of tap water and wiping the blood off her smooth fingertips. Talia knew Bane wouldn’t glance in her direction and see her when he extended his hand to Helena as she crouched on the hardwood floor. 

Talia had placed a palm over her heart to make sure it was still beating when it seemed to take the longest time as Helena stared at Bane’s outstretched hand, took sheer eons to examine his ragged cuticles and uneven nails. Helena’s eyes found the river and valley of each scar and imperfection before she reached for his hand.

Talia wanted to scream until her lungs expanded too much and popped when she watched Bane and Helena’s hands meet. She watched them walk away as she remained hidden in the darkness. She shook herself to present as the gas gauge chimed angrily near empty and she squinted at the upcoming exit signs.

She flicked on her turn signal and headed towards a truck stop with a popular burger chain drive-thru, coffee shop and high-priced fuel. 

Talia shook her head as she filled the large engine, she had not imagined that Bane’s fall from grace would’ve looked like this. The lives still left to take made her body tingle, electricity seemed to emanate from her toxic core, her rotten soul slid back behind the wheel with a blended coffee drink and cloud like mound of whipped cream in hand. She sucked on the green straw, it could’ve easily been a bright green cock that ejaculated sugared cream onto her lower lip as her tongue darted out and lapped up the sticky sweetness. 

As Talia’s all-weather tires ate up the miles with enthusiastic vigor as she headed toward the Lang household, in the kitchen of Talia’s eventual destination, Helena filled the clear coffee carafe with tepid water and measured eight grounds of a heavy-bodied roast coffee into an unbleached filter before she hit the start button.

Helena hummed to herself as she gathered up a few spoons, cloth napkins and breakfast pastries as the coffee brewed. She watched Bane through the large bay window as he reclined in the padded chaise lounge on the redwood deck. Bane had his eyes closed as he stared up at the sun through scarred eyelids.

Bane didn’t open his eyes until Helena spoke as she settled on the other tropical-padded chaise lounge. 

“What are you thinking about?”

He looked over and smiled his thanks at her extended hand and cup of near-scalding French roast. 

“Something from long ago, you wouldn’t be interested,” he said easily and let his eyes linger on the exposed skin at the top of her chest until she flushed.

“I might be,” she said as she took a nervous sip and swirled the sweetened brew.

Bane paused right before he spoke. He realized he didn’t know how to properly describe Pena Dura.

Bane’s eyes found hers on his, open and wanting to listen. Not being stained and broken by the Pit’s toxicity. 

He took a couple burning swallows of the rich roast. “I was born in a place you are blessed to never see. My spirit was tested, and my soul was stained in the depths of inhumanity. I grew to a man in a subterranean underbelly where the shadows had teeth.”

Bane paused and found Helena watching him intently. 

Her neutral expression beautiful but unreadable. 

“Talia liberated from the darkness, delivered me to the light by her own hand,” Bane said as he trailed off and closed his eyes as he turned his face back up towards the sun. The warmth bathing him, accepting him. 

Bane didn’t want to share the memory that the sunlight’s warm fingertips had pulled from the recesses of his mind.

Talia had several muscular men pulling Bane out of the Pit. 

Right before he reached the surface, his broken hands and twisted body clinging to the thick rope, Talia told the men to halt their upward momentum. 

Talia had pulled out a sharp dagger from a thigh sheath and held it to the taut rope that kept Bane from falling and breaking too much to heal from. 

Talia had made him swear that he would give her all that remained of himself. He had already broken his very body, mind, and soul for her, but hanging from that rope, he vowed to feed her the last bits of his own flesh before she starved to death.

Bane shook his head as he heard the creak of Helena’s lawn furniture as she rose from the plush palm tree covered padding. 

Bane was still caught between past memories and the present day when Helena’s arms were at once around him as she slid onto his lap. 

His heart caught in his chest as her limbs surrounded him and his senses become inundated by her. His senses were waterboarded by a potent surge of lust as his hands moved before he was capable of speaking and began pushing her clothes free.

Helena squealed as his coffee fell and splashed onto their half-naked bodies.

For several moments, the only sounds were Bane and Helena’s rapid rise in breathing as they frantically pulled each other’s clothes free. 

Bane rose to his feet and lifted her up in his arms until the tips of her bare toes brushed the ticklish ends of the green blades of grass.

He walked backwards until the chaise lounge bit into his muscular calf and clumsily settled on the thick pad and settled her warm naked body on his equally bare flesh. 

“Wait a second,” he growled, his voice nearly breaking as he yanked the elastic band from her hair until the silken strands fell around her bare shoulders and teased her bare breasts.

Bane stared up at her as her naked flesh blocked out the sun. His breath caught as his eyes never left hers as he dropped his hands to her hips and shifted until he could lift her. He adjusted his grip until her wet, tight center was poised over the head of his hard cock. 

He stared up at her, the sun making a bright halo around her as his eyes trailed down the front of her naked body until he found her tight, wet center. Bane groaned lowly, in concert with her breathless sighs as he pulled her pink, wet center down onto his hardness until he couldn’t impale her further on his rigid cock. Bane squeezed his fingertips tight on her supple flesh until he couldn’t force his cock any further. His masculinity pulsed deep inside her as he began to increase his pace until he was moving with frenzied enthusiasm, the sound of their wet intimate flesh kissing wasn’t as loud as the gasps he forced from her throat each time his cock slammed into her. 

Bane’s orgasm overwhelmed him; he kept his ecstasy confirmed to a grumble that filled his chest as his cock spasmed inside her tight, wet center. His mind created a trapdoor that spilled him back to the memory of clutching the thick rope, being suspended over the Pit, vowing his very life to Talia in order for her to not cut through the tired strands and steal his life. 

“Anything,” he groaned and danced his hands up her back, clutching at every part of her as he continued. “Anything, anything, I’ll……,” he murmured as he kept his cock firmly inside her, making her intimate center stretch to accommodate his fullness.

“What? What did you say?” Helena stammered breathlessly as he pressed his face between her breasts, his nose pushing against the thick cartilage nestled where her breastbone met. He flicked his tongue against the flushed skin over her xiphoid process as he repeated himself in a barely coherent whisper. 

“Anything, everything. I’ll give you all that you command.”

Helena felt her own pleasure began to peak and electricity surged through her as she tried to speak before her body took over and she couldn’t use words. “I don’t want to command you to do anything,” she managed before she fell into an orgasmic abyss. 

Bane felt her inner wet pussy walls tighten around his still hard cock, he moved with lightning fast speed and shifted them around on the rectangular, gaudy floral padding. 

Helena found her legs spread wide, his large hands splayed open and pushed against the smooth flesh of her inner thighs as he watched himself drill his cock relentlessly into her pink, soaking wet center. Bane growled in frustration as he felt his cock began to soften, he wanted to stay inside her and ride the wave of her pleasure as her body undulated underneath him.

“Not to command?” Bane murmured as he felt sweat roll into his eyes and made him squint from the sting. 

Helena could hardly breathe let alone speak as she first just shook her head.

“No?” Bane repeated and caught her eyes, his dark pupils burned brightly with all he was afraid to share.

Helena heard everything he couldn’t say.

Helena raised her hands and cupped his jaw. She traced her fingers over the scarred planes and angles of his face as she whispered. 

“Not to command, to love.”


	14. Full Bladders and Heart to Hearts

The next two hours passed with the bore of the monotonous stretch of freeway for Talia as she steadily approached the Lang household, the all-weather tires eating up the asphalt as she kept the accelerator pressed to the floor. 

The same one hundred and twenty minutes was the light to Talia’s approaching darkness as Bane’s heart swelled in his chest when he didn’t have to vow his life in order to receive love.

Bane and Helena shared the chaise lounge for a while after he tucked her against his side. The brisk air got to Helena first and she returned to the warm kitchen to refill her coffee cup.

Everything changed as Helena rooted around a low cupboard for a bottle of barrel-aged whiskey to add to their coffee, something to warm their centers. 

Bane kept his eyes closed under the sun, the firm padding cradled his massive frame, and he could’ve slipped into sleep if Helena’s piercing scream hadn’t shaken him into immediate, upright consciousness.

The sound of glass shattering followed before another, shorter shout from Helena. Bane could hear the fear in her wail as he moved with the fluidity of something not manmade and found Talia standing in the middle of the spacious kitchen. 

A .45 titanium handgun in her right hand was pointed at Helena who had turned nearly grey.

“Get on your knees whore,” Talia spit.

Talia’s glossy, red, full lips pulled into a big smile when Bane appeared in the opposite doorway to the kitchen.

“There you are,” she murmured as her eyes returned to Helena, slowing lowering herself to the floor.

Bane’s eyes went from the gun in Talia’s steady hands to Helena, vulnerable as she knelt.

“Come in and sit down,” Talia said to Bane, never taking her eyes off Helena.

“Talia,” Bane started before Talia pivoted and leveled the gun to the middle of his chest. “Sit down, you’re continuing to give me nothing but more reasons why I should’ve cut that fucking rope. Why did I think you had honor or loyalty. You’re a whoremonger like my father,” she hissed and used the gun to point at the dining room chairs. “Sit down or I shoot your pet slut while you continue to stand there and disobey.”

Bane nodded and settled in the closest seat, his eyes never leaving hers. He longed to openly stare at Helena, rush to her side. He had to be careful, he was entering dangerous territory where he didn’t necessarily have the upper hand and for the first time was truly afraid of loss. 

Talia nodded in satisfaction as Bane sat and held his eyes, unblinking as she continued. “What is it about that cunt?”

Bane allowed himself a carefully measured glance in Helena’s direction. She had her eyes squeezed shut and tears were running down her pale cheeks. 

“Why her?” Talia asked again and Bane brought his eyes back to meet hers.

Talia’s anger was further fanned until it was practically pyroclastic as Bane remained silent. 

“Is it her body? Her family’s money or just the fact that she’s an available whore?”

Bane smiled and spoke easily. “You know nothing of honor, loyalty or leadership. Your father didn’t sire a warrior.”

Talia narrowed her eyes and stomped the small distance between herself and Helena. 

Bane stood as Talia grabbed a handful of the silken fall of Helena’s hair and yanked her neck taut as she shoved the end of the handgun under her chin. 

“You’re throwing away your honor and service for this whore, you’re just like my father, he fell for the mother of this crying cunt.”

“What do you want Talia? What price will rectify the errors I have committed against you?”

Helena could breathe a little easier when Bane’s question caught Talia off guard, and she lessened the pressure of the gun against her throat. 

“You think there’s something that can make up for your betrayal, your treason against me?”

“Even Jupiter would accept a sacrifice laid at his feet,” Bane murmured.

Talia narrowed her eyes and smiled, her cruel words were cold and pierced his heart. 

“Kill her, pledge yourself to me.”

Bane fought to not look at Helena as he walked towards where Talia had her on her knees and terrified. 

Talia stepped back from Helena and raised the gun at Bane. “Kill her, lay her at my feet. I shall absolve you of all your wrongdoing.”

Bane let himself turn towards Helena as she curled her body until she could make herself smaller. He wanted so badly to comfort her as he brought his gaze back to Talia’s.

He dropped heavily to his knees in front of Talia and rested his hands loosely at his thighs. Bane bowed his head and let his breathing come back to a normal rate as he felt Talia’s assessing eyes move over him, judging the veracity of his penitence. 

His humility was rewarded as he heard the air slide around the barrel of the gun as she lowered it. Bane moved with inhuman dexterity and had Talia’s gun hand wrapped up before he brought her to the ground and smothered her. 

Talia screeched and shouted in a dead language before Bane’s massive hand closed around her throat and cut off her air. She blinked up at him, her eyes widening as he moved the gun to hover over the center of her beautiful face. 

Bane’s eyes filled with fire as he whispered lowly. “I’d change the shape of the universe for that woman. I’m going to feed her persimmons until I own every part of her,” he growled right before he pulled the trigger.

The armor-piercing rounds were too heavy of firepower for such close proximity. Talia’s face caved inwards and exploded out the rear of her skull, her head flew apart like a dropped fleshy, watermelon. 

Helena remained in a near-fetal position with her eyes squeezed shut as so many noises happened around her. 

She screamed when a hand handed on her shoulder. 

“Shhh, you’re okay, you’re completely safe,” came Bane’s voice.

Helena slowly rolled towards him and let him pull her to her feet and into his embrace. 

Her eyes tried to dart everywhere as she saw blood but no bodies. 

“What hap….?” she started to ask before Bane pressed his fingertips to her lips. “I’m going to walk you upstairs; I’d like you to take a bath and get some rest.”

Helena started to protest before Bane interrupted her. “You are safe, I just need to tie up some loose ends.”

Helena nodded, in her head she imagined Bane burying balls of pink yarn and knitting needles. 

She drank the generous glass of scotch Bane handed her. He had mixed in a heavy sedative and she slept for eighteen solid hours, waking up with a full bladder and a lot of questions. 

Bane had coffee and breakfast waiting for her and they talked for a very long time. 

Six Months Later

Helena jumped about three feet into the air when Bane’s hands landed on her bare shoulders. 

Bane chuckled lowly; the sound so masculine as it moved throughout his broad chest. She adjusted the bath towel she had wrapped around her body and went back to ordering takeout from the touch screen tablet.

He settled next to her on the sofa and waited impatiently as she typed in her credit card number and tapped through a few other screens before she set the tablet aside.

“Forty-five minutes until pizza,” Helena said as she relaxed against his side. 

Bane dropped his arm around her and squeezed her tighter to his side as his eyes swept across the collection of photos on the mantle.

Her father’s body hadn’t been recovered yet and he had helped turned her life upside down and inside out.

“Do you regret accepting me?” Bane asked and shifted until he could see her beautiful face and meet her eyes. 

“I don’t regret anything. Why are you asking me something like that, are you okay?” Helena asked as she frowned and reached a hand up to cup his jaw, tracing her thumb along his lower lip.

He caught her small wrist in his large grip and pressed his lips to her palm. 

Bane caught her trying to cover her smile with her other hand, he didn’t need to ask her to explain. 

“I thought that’s why you wanted to get takeout tonight and stay in,” she started before she began to blush and added in a rush. 

“To celebrate our six-month anniversary.”

Bane made her squeal involuntarily as he scooped her up and plopped her unceremoniously onto her back.

“We still have forty-two minutes until the pizza is delivered,” he growled as he pulled at her towel.


End file.
